i. twi'; (n>7»» 


XiWision  TX  1 954 

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Section 


OCT  25  1918 


®fje  jMenbenijall  Hectureg,  Jf ourtl) 
Beltocreb  at  Be^auto  Umbersrttp 


061  CAl  St 


Religion  and  W ar 


by  y 

WILLIAM  HERBERT  PERRY  FAUNCE 

President  of  Brown  University 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

CINCINNATI 


NEW  YORK 


Copyright,  1918,  by 

WILLIAM  HERBERT  PERRY  FAUNCE 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

Foreword .  5 

I.  The  Attitude  of  the  Old  Testament .  9 

II.  The  Attitude  of  the  New  Testament .  41 

III.  The  Pacifism  of  the  Rationalists  .  75 

IV.  The  Moral  Leadership  of  the  Church .  103 

V.  Light  on  the  Cloud .  133 

VI.  The  Rebuilding  of  the_World .  161 


V 


FOREWORD 


Has  Christianity  any  message  to  a  world 
at  war?  Does  true  religion  ever  sanction 
war?  Is  there  scriptural  basis  either  for 
pacifism  or  militarism?  Does  the  world-war 
mean  the  collapse  of  the  church  and  the  ulti¬ 
mate  failure  of  the  Christian  faith?  What 
will  be  the  final  issue  of  the  war — a  relapse 
into  barbarism  or  the  coming  of  a  new  and 
higher  social  order? 

These  questions  have  sorely  perplexed  the 
Christian  world  for  the  past  four  years. 
They  are  answered  in  the  following  lectures 
with  a  rare  insight  and  sanity  in  interpreting 
the  Scriptures  and  with  fearlessness  in  fac¬ 
ing  facts.  This  discussion  gives  scant  com¬ 
fort  either  to  the  professional  militarist  or 
to  the  incurable  pacifist.  It  affords  a 
rational  and  religious  basis  for  true  patriot¬ 
ism,  world  internationalism,  and  triumphant 
righteousness. 

The  Mendenhall  Lectures  of  DePauw 

5 


FOREWORD 


University,  to  which  this  series  of  addresses 
belongs,  was  founded  by  the  Rev.  Marma- 
duke  H.  Mendenhall,  D.D.,  of  the  North 
Indiana  Conference  of  the  Methodist  Epis¬ 
copal  Church.  The  object  of  the  donor  was 
“to  found  a  perpetual  lectureship  on  the  evi¬ 
dences  of  the  Divine  Origin  of  Christianity 
and  the  inspiration  and  authority  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures.  The  lecturers  must  be  per¬ 
sons  of  high  and  wide  repute,  of  broad  and 
varied  scholarship,  who  firmly  adhere  to  the 
evangelical  system  of  Christian  faith.  The 
selection  of  lecturers  may  be  made  from  the 
world  of  Christian  scholarship,  without  re¬ 
gard  to  denominational  divisions.  Each 
course  of  lectures  is  to  be  published  in  book 
form  by  an  eminent  publishing  house  and 
sold  at  cost  to  the  Faculty  and  students  of 
the  University.” 

Lectures  previously  published:  1913,  The 
Bible  and  Life,  Edwin  Holt  Hughes ;  1914, 
The  Literary  Primacy  of  the  Bible,  George 
Peck  Eckman;  1917,  Understanding  the 
Scriptures,  Francis  John  McConnell. 

George  R.  Grose, 

President  DePauw  University. 

6 


I  have  felt  with  my  native  land,  I  am  one  with  my 
kind, 

I  embrace  the  purpose  of  God,  and  the  doom  as¬ 
signed. 

— Tennyson. 


/ 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  OLD 
TESTAMENT 

Religion  is  constantly  presented  as  the 
remedy  for  war,  yet  religion  has  usually  been 
the  prop  and  often  the  cause  of  war :  therein 
lies  the  problem  which  the  whole  world  now 
faces.  Religion — which  for  the  western 
world  means  Christianity — abhors  and  re¬ 
bukes  war  and  steadily  plans  to  end  it;  yet 
religion  in  its  various  forms  is  appealed  to  by 
every  warrior  as  his  sanction  and  main  mo¬ 
tive  power.  “They  that  take  the  sword  shall 
perish  with  the  sword,”  cries  the  warning 
voice  of  the  Nazarene;  but  “Forward  with 
God”  has  been  the  cry  of  every  commanding 
general. 

Surely,  it  is  time  to  ask  as  to  the  relation 

of  faith  in  the  unseen  to  the  sanguinary 

struggles  that  have  devastated  the  world 

century  after  century.  We  may  not  solve 

the  ancient  enigma,  but  we  can  at  least  try  to 

9 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


understand  it.  It  is  not  enough  to  lament 
that  the  time  is  out  of  joint ;  if  we  can  under¬ 
stand  in  some  measure  how  the  disjointing 
has  come  about,  it  may  seem  to  us  not  a 
cursed  spite  but  a  sacred  summons  that  we 
were  born  to  set  it  right.  Let  us  turn  first  to 
the  ancient  writings  which  are  sacred  to 
three  great  religions  and  have  largely  shaped 
the  history  of  the  last  two  thousand  years. 

The  moment  we  open  the  historical  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  we  are  plunged  into 
war.  More  bloody  narratives  it  would  be 
hard  to  find  in  any  records  of  the  past.  The 
nomad  tribes  of  the  early  chapters  show  a 
fine  loyalty  to  the  cause  of  the  tribe  and  the 
tribal  god,  and  an  absolute  indifference  as 
to  the  means  by  which  that  loyalty  was  ex¬ 
pressed.  In  one  of  the  earliest  fragments 
of  the  literature,  the  “song  of  Lamech,”  we 
hear  that  ancient  chieftain  devoting  the 
newly  acquired  arts  of  civilization  to  the 
slaughter  of  his  neighbors  and  vowing  a 
vengeance  that  should  be  “seventy  and  seven¬ 
fold.”  A  little  later  we  read  of  Abraham’s 
punitive  expedition  against  the  four  Meso¬ 
potamian  kings,  by  which  he  rescued  “all  the 

10 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


goods  and  the  women  also.”  As  soon  as  the 
Hebrews  are  fairly  out  of  Egypt  and  en 
route  for  their  promised  land,  they  enter  on 
a  series  of  wars  which  endured  for  centuries, 
and  which  for  pitiless  severity  and  ruthless 
atrocity  are  unsurpassed  in  human  history. 
“By  war,”  says  Jahweh  “I  took  you.”  War 
was  the  method  by  which  the  wandering 
tribes  of  Israel  entered  Palestine,  war  their 
constant  reliance  for  protection,  for  unity, 
for  progress.  And  such  war  was  usually  un¬ 
restrained  by  any  pity  for  age  or  sex,  by  any 
thought  of  human  brotherhood  or  any  fear 
of  a  hereafter. 

Among  the  earliest  poems  preserved  in 
literature  is  the  magnificent  song  of  Deb¬ 
orah — superb  in  its  patriotism,  its  faith  in 
the  unseen,  and  pitiless  in  its  taunting  of 
a  fallen  foe  who  had  been  treacherously 
slain.  The  Philistine  captain  Sisera,  weary 
and  thirsty,  had  eagerly  accepted  Jael’s 
proffer  of  sacred  Oriental  hospitality. 
When  she  had  brought  him  forth  milk  and 
butter  in  a  lordly  dish,  and  he  lay  quiet  in 
unsuspecting  slumber,  she  drove  the  tent- 

pin  through  his  temples,  and  all  Israel 

11 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


greeted  her  as  “blessed  above  women.”  The 
great  song  gloats  over  Sisera’s  downfall  and 
bis  mother’s  sorrow,  rolling  the  sonorous 
phrases  as  a  sweet  morsel  under  the  tongue : 
“At  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell,  he  lay  down: 
at  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell:  Where  he 
bowed,  there  he  fell  down  dead.  .  .  .  The 
mother  of  Sisera  .  .  .  cried  through  the 

lattice,  Why  is  his  chariot  so  long  in  coming? 
.  .  .  So  let  all  thine  enemies  perish,  O 

Lord.” 

The  narrative  which  we  find  in  the  books 
of  Joshua  and  Judges  pictures  a  nomad  peo¬ 
ple,  a  crude  chaotic  society,  capable  of  noble 
loyalty  and  devotion  and  equally  capable  of 
appalling  atrocities  in  warfare.  Many  chap¬ 
ters  in  the  story  are  as  repellent  to  the 
modern  sense  of  justice  and  truth  and  mercy 
as  any  that  can  be  found  in  recorded  history. 
Joshua  combined  fine  faith  in  the  unseen 
with  equal  faith  in  the  power  and  legitimacy 
of  “frightfulness.”  When  J ericho  was  cap¬ 
tured,  only  one  family,  that  of  Rahab,  was 
spared;  with  that  exception  “all  that  was  in 
the  city,  both  man  and  woman,  young  and 

old,  and  ox,  and  sheep,  and  ass,”  perished. 

12 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


Then  Joshua — whose  name  is  another 
form  of  Jesus — turned  his  attention  to  the 
Amorites,  who  had  made  a  confederation 
against  him.  In  a  battle  lasting  all  through 
a  summer’s  day, — which  the  lost  book  of 
Jasher  poetically  represents  as  lengthened 
by  the  standing  still  of  sun  and  moon — 
Joshua  quite  annihilated  the  Amorites.  By 
way  of  striking  terror  to  all  other  foes 
Joshua  dragged  out  of  a  cave  the  five  Amor- 
ite  kings  and  said  to  his  military  officers: 
“Come  near,  put  your  feet  upon  the  necks  of 
these  kings.”  After  this  symbolic  triumph, 
Joshua  hanged  the  five  kings  on  five  trees, 
and  then  cast  their  dead  bodies  into  the  cave 
from  which  he  had  dragged  the  living  men. 
Such  was  an  Israelitish  victory  in  the  brave 
days  of  old. 

In  the  disorganized  period  of  the  Judges, 
when  every  man  did  that  which  was  right  in 
his  own  eyes,  Gideon,  the  heroic  chieftain, 
led  by  desire  for  blood-revenge  for  the  slay¬ 
ing  of  his  brothers,  swooped  down  with  his 
immortal  three  hundred  upon  the  Midianites 
and  put  them  to  rout.  The  elders  of  Suc- 
coth,  who  had  refused  food  to  Gideon’s 

13 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


“faint  yet  pursuing”  band,  he  slew  with  all 
the  ingenuities  of  Oriental  cruelty.  “He 
took  the  elders  of  the  city,  and  thorns  of  the 
wilderness  and  briers,  and  with  them  he 
taught  the  men  of  Succoth”!  What  dark 
possibilities  lie  behind  that  ironic  “teaching” 
of  the  men  of  Succoth  we  prefer  not  to  im¬ 
agine.  The  strangely  mingled  elements  in 
Gideon’s  character  appear  in  the  fact  that 
while  he  had  gone  against  Midian  at  the 
command  of  Jehovah,  yet  out  of  the  spoils 
of  the  victory  which  he  melted  down  he  made 
a  golden  image  and  set  it  up  in  his  own  city 
and  “it  became  a  snare  unto  Gideon  and  to 
his  house.” 

Abimelech,  the  son  of  Gideon,  slew  sev¬ 
enty  brethren,  burned  a  fortress  containing  a 
thousand  men  and  women,  and  was  about  to 
burn  another  when  his  head  was  broken  by  a 
millstone  thrown  down  by  an  unknown  wo¬ 
man.  Samson  was  acclaimed  a  national 
hero,  yet  his  only  greatness  seems  to  have 
been  physical.  Ehud  slew  the  king  of  Moab 
by  treachery,  saying,  “I  have  a  message  of 
God  for  thee,”  and  then,  as  the  king  rose  to 
receive  it,  plunging  a  sword  through  the 

14 


r 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


king’s  body.  Yet  of  Ehud  it  was  said  that 
the  Lord  raised  them  up  a  “saviour.”  Forty 
and  two  thousand  of  the  Ephraimites  were 
slain  by  the  men  of  Gilead  when  the 
Ephraimites  failed  to  pass  the  test  imposed 
at  the  fords  of  the  Jordan  and  said  “Sib- 
boleth”  instead  of  “Shibboleth.” 

These  strange  stories  of  mingled  bright 
and  dark,  of  shining  faith  and  abhorrent 
cruelty,  bear  on  their  face  the  marks  of 
verisimilitude.  In  a  crude  age  “God’s  good 
men”  were  crude  enough.  They  were  the 
best  men  of  their  time,  but  the  time  was 
primitive  and  barbarous.  They  conceived 
their  God  as  a  tribal  deity,  fiercely  jealous, 
pitilessly  punishing  disobedience,  placated 
by  human  sacrifice,  as  in  the  case  of  Jeph- 
thah’s  daughter,  a  God  in  whose  service  all 
deeds  were  right  if  they  led  to  victory.  They 
readily  admitted  that  other  gods  might  exist, 
but  there  was  only  one  God  for  them,  the 
great  and  terrible  Jehovah,  who  had  said 
amid  the  thunders  of  Sinai:  “Thou  shalt 
have  no  other  gods  before  me.”  Other  gods 
might  confer  favors  on  the  tribes  who  served 
them,  but  the  Israelites  were  sure  that  their 

15 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


God  would  do  far  more.  So  Jephthah  told 
the  Moabites  he  was  quite  willing  to  com¬ 
pare  the  achievements  of  the  God  of  Israel 
with  those  of  the  god  of  Moab:  “Wilt  not 
thou  possess  that  which  Chemosh  thy  god 
giveth  thee  to  possess?  So  whomsoever  the 
Lord  our  God  shall  drive  out  from  before  us, 
them  will  we  possess.”  Thus  Jehovah  and 
Chemosh  were  neighboring  deities,  but 
Israel  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  Che¬ 
mosh,  being  convinced  that  Jehovah  could 
give  more  victories  and  larger  territory  than 
all  the  other  tribal  gods  of  Palestine. 

It  is  therefore  clear  that  the  sanguinary 
wars  of  the  twelve  tribes  were  not  waged  in 
spite  of  their  religious  faith,  but  because  of 
it.  Warfare  was  not  a  lapse  from  moral 
purpose,  but  was  the  fierce  and  resistless  in¬ 
carnation  of  that  purpose.  The  people 
fought  not  in  occasional  forgetfulness  of 
Jehovah,  but  in  devout  remembrance  of  his 
explicit  commands.  They  regarded  every 
ambush,  every  raid  into  the  enemies’  coun¬ 
try,  every  destruction  of  a  village,  as  the  best 
possible  service  of  their  God.  Nationality 

and  religion  were  one.  To  be  constantly 

16 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


ready  for  war  was  the  finest  proof  of  reli¬ 
gious  devotion.  The  singer  who  wrote, 

“Blessed  be  Jehovah  my  Rock, 

Who  teaches  my  hands  to  war, 

And  my  fingers  to  fight,” 

may  have  belonged  to  a  later  age,  but  he 
breathed  the  spirit  of  the  entire  history. 
“Up  to  the  eighth  century,”  says  George 
Adam  Smith,  “the  history  of  Israel  was 
largely  one  of  conquest.”  The  book  of 
Judges  declares  that  the  reason  why  Je¬ 
hovah  did  not  drive  out  the  Canaanites  all  at 
once,  but  allowed  them  to  be  only  gradually 
exterminated,  was  that  the  Israelites  might 
have  material  for  constant  practice  in  war¬ 
fare. 

Before  going  out  to  war,  sacrifice  was  al¬ 
ways  offered  and  the  oracle  was  consulted  as 
to  the  will  of  Jehovah.  All  the  conflicts  of 
the  tribes  were  wars  of  Jehovah.  He  was 
the  “Lord  of  hosts” — a  term  which  is  ex¬ 
plained  by  its  accompanying  phrase,  “God 
of  the  armies  of  Israel.”  The  sacred  ark 
was  both  the  shrine  of  worship  and  the  stand¬ 
ard-bearer  in  war.  It  was  carried  into  the 

17 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

shock  of  battle  because  it  was  the  dwelling 
place  of  Jehovah.  In  the  great  battle  with 
Amalek  Jehovah  is  not  only  present  but  vis¬ 
ibly  active.  We  read  that  “Jehovah  cast 
stones  from  heaven  on  Amalek.”  Hail¬ 
stones,  storm-winds,  the  lightning  and  the 
thunder  frequently  bore  witness  to  the  divine 
participation  in  the  good  fight.  The  proph¬ 
ets  addressed  the  people  before  the  battle, 
promising  rich  booty  to  every  fighter,  and 
the  sweet  singers  of  Israel  gathered  after  the 
battle  to  praise  Jehovah  who  had  given  the 
Israelites  the  necks  of  their  enemies  and  en¬ 
riched  them  with  captives  and  spoils.  Just 
as  in  Homer’s  Iliad  the  hero  Achilles 
dragged  the  dead  body  of  Hector  tied  to  his 
chariot  seven  times  around  the  walls  of  Troy 
and  no  Greek  voice  failed  to  applaud  his 
atrocious  revenge,  so  when  the  Israelites 
plundered  the  slain  warriors,  when  they  took 
hostages,  levied  enormous  tribute,  destroyed 
women  carrying  life  unborn,  razed  towns  so 
that  the  region  was  sown  with  salt,  they 
never  dreamed  of  any  displeasure  from  their 
God.  F or  his  sake  they  did  those  things  and 

of  his  appreciation  they  were  sure. 

18 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


After  Israel  had  entered  Palestine  the 
spirit  of  warfare  was  kindled  afresh  and  the 
standards  were  scarcely  higher.  The  occa¬ 
sional  raids  now  became  pitched  battles,  en¬ 
counters  in  the  desert  gave  way  to  the  sieges 
of  great  strongholds,  and  the  kings  of  Israel 
always  possessed  a  standing  army.  Hence 
the  war  was  on  a  larger  scale  and  with  in¬ 
creased  brutality.  Samuel  and  all  the 
prophets  that  followed  after  were  very  clear 
as  to  Israel’s  duty.  “In  leading  the  war 
propaganda,”  says  Professor  J.  M.  Powis 
Smith,  “the  prophets  were  second  to  none. 
The  existence  of  Israel  was  at  stake,  and 
with  it  was  involved  the  existence  of  Jehovah. 
The  god  and  his  people  must  stand  or  fall 
together.  The  wars  of  Israel  were  the  wars 
of  Jehovah.”  The  nation  desired  a  king 
chiefly  as  a  military  leader,  and  by  military 
arts  was  the  site  of  Jerusalem  captured  from 
the  foe  and  the  city  of  Jerusalem  defended 
throughout  its  history.  The  monarchs  felt 
that  the  best  defense  of  the  kingdom  was  to 
engage  constantly  in  offensive  war,  and  no 
prophet  questioned  the  right  and  the  duty. 
Indeed,  the  prophets  often  outdid  the  kings 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

in  barbarity.  Samuel’s  fiercest  invective 
against  King  Saul  was  because  Saul  in 
slaughtering  all  the  Amalekites  had  spared 
their  King  Agag  and  also  saved  alive  “sheep 
and  oxen  and  lambs.”  Sternly  Samuel 
cried:  “What  meaneth  then  this  bleating  of 
the  sheep  in  mine  ears,  and  the  lowing  of  the 
oxen  which  I  hear?  .  .  .  The  Lord,  he  hath 
also  rejected  thee  from  being  king.”  Then 
the  relentless  prophet,  who  as  a  child  had 
heard  the  divine  voice  in  the  silence  of  the 
tabernacle  and  had  answered,  “Here  am  I,” 
called  for  Agag,  and  “Agag  came  unto  him 
delicately.”  Then  the  enraged  Samuel 
cried,  “As  thy  sword  hath  made  women 
childless,  so  shall  thy  mother  be  childless 
among  women,”  and  he  “hewed  Agag  in 
pieces  before  the  Lord,”  that  is,  as  a  gift  or 
sacrifice  to  the  Lord.  And  none  in  Israel 
questioned  the  anger  of  the  prophet  or  the 
justice  of  the  execution. 

David,  the  man  after  God’s  own  heart, 
was  one  of  the  moral  leaders  of  his  age.  In 
him  the  warrior  and  the  singer,  the  shepherd 
and  the  king,  the  adventurer  and  the  admin¬ 
istrator  are  finely  combined,  and  we  have  a 

20 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


character  unsurpassed  by  any  hero  in  that 
age  of  the  world.  No  one  of  Homer’s  men 
will  compare  with  the  son  of  Jesse  in  tender¬ 
ness  and  fidelity  and  rectitude.  But  in  war 
he  was  a  child  of  his  era.  He  seized  Saul’s 
sons  and  “hung  them  up  unto  the  Lord  in 
Gibeah.”  The  cutting  off  of  thumbs  and 
great  toes,  or  of  heads  and  hands,  the  depor¬ 
tation  and  the  torture  of  captives  are  men¬ 
tioned  again  and  again  without  a  tremor. 
When  David  captured  the  royal  city  of  the 
Ammonites,  he  did  to  the  people  things  that 
are  best  left  to  the  obscure  simplicity  of  the 
archaic  story.  “He  brought  forth  the  peo¬ 
ple  that  were  therein,  and  put  them  under 
saws,  and  under  harrows  of  iron  and  under 
axes  of  iron,  and  made  them  pass  through 
the  brickkiln;  and  thus  did  he  unto  all  the 
cities  of  the  children  of  Ammon.”  Thus 
proudly  and  without  one  regret  does  Israel 
record  some  of  the  deeds  of  the  man  who 
was  believed  to  have  written:  “Like  as  a 
father  pitieth  his  children,  so  the  Lord 
pitieth  them  that  fear  him.”  But  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  Ammon  did  not  fear  Jehovah,  and 

were  therefore  not  included  in  the  precepts 

21 


V 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


of  compassion — so  ruled  the  highest  con¬ 
science  of  humanity  a  thousand  years  be¬ 
fore  Christ. 

It  would  be  a  simple  matter  to  institute  a 
“deadly  parallel”  and  print  in  adjoining 
columns  the  worst  barbarities  of  modern 
warfare,  and  those  committed  in  the  wars  of 
ancient  Israel.  We  need  only  notice  that 
many  passages  in  the  ancient  book  of  Judges 
are  startlingly  like  extracts  from  the  reports 
of  Lord  Bryce  on  atrocities  in  Armenia  and 
in  Belgium.  Listen  to  this :  “They  beat  down 
the  cities,  .  .  .  they  stopped  all  the  wells 
of  water,  and  felled  all  the  good  trees:  only 
in  Kir-haraseth  left  they  the  stones  thereof.” 
And  how  sadly  modern  is  this:  “Joshua  drew 
not  his  hand  back,  .  .  .  until  he  had  ut¬ 

terly  destroyed  all  the  inhabitants  of  Ai. 
.  .  .  Behold,  the  smoke  of  the  city  as¬ 

cended  up  to  heaven,  and  they  had  no  power 
to  flee  this  way  or  that  way:  .  .  .  and 

Joshua  burnt  Ai,  and  made  it  an  heap  for¬ 
ever,  even  a  desolation.”  And  the  heart  of 
the  modern  Turk  might  seem  to  speak 
through  the  Hebrew  psalmist  who  wrote, 

“The  righteous  shall  rejoice  when  he  seeth 

22 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


the  vengeance:  he  shall  wash  his  feet  in  the 
blood  of  the  wicked.” 

The  Deuteronomist  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  Israel’s  early  lawgivers  words  that  seem 
to  have  been  copied  from  proclamations  re¬ 
cently  posted  in  Dinant  or  Louvain:  “When 
thou  comest  nigh  unto  a  city  to  fight  against 
it,  then  proclaim  peace  unto  it.  And  it  shall 
be,  if  it  make  thee  answer  of  peace,. and  open 
unto  thee,  then  it  shall  be,  that  all  the  people 
that  is  found  therein  shall  be  tributaries  unto 
thee,  and  they  shall  serve  thee.  And  if  it  will 
make  no  peace  with  thee,  .  .  .  thou  shalt 
.  .  .  save  alive  nothing  that  breatheth.” 

So  old  and  so  new,  so  utterly  antiquated  and 
so  completely  modern  is  the  spirit  of  nation¬ 
ality  clothing  itself  in  the  garb  of  religion, 
and  the  power  of  religion  to  arouse  the  deep¬ 
est  passions  and  energies  of  humanity. 

It  is  instructive  to  compare  the  following 
passages:  “Thou  shalt  surely  smite  the  in¬ 
habitants  of  that  city  with  the  edge  of  the 
sword,  destroying  it  utterly,  and  all  that  is 
therein,  and  the  cattle  thereof,  with  the  edge 
of  the  sword.  And  thou  shalt  gather  all  the 

spoil  of  it  into  the  midst  of  the  street  thereof, 

23 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


and  shalt  burn  with  fire  the  city,  and  all  the 
spoil  thereof  every  whit,  for  the  Lord  thy 
God :  and  it  shall  be  an  heap  forever :  it  shall 
not  be  built  again.1 2  “Beginning  with  to¬ 
day,  no  more  prisoners  are  to  be  taken.  All 
prisoners  are  to  be  put  to  death.  The 
wounded,  whether  armed  or  not,  are  to  be 
put  to  death.  Prisoners,  even  when  they 
are  organized  in  large  units,  are  to  be  put  to 
death.  No  living  man  is  to  remain  behind 
us.”  • 

Compare  again  the  utterance  of  religious 
leaders  more  than  a  thousand  years  before 
Christ  with  the  utterance  of  certain  Chris¬ 
tian  ministers  in  the  twentieth  century. 
“The  children  of  Israel  inquired  of  the 
Lord:  .  .  .  Shall  I  yet  again  go  out  to 

battle  against  the  children  of  Benjamin  my 
brother,  or  shall  I  cease?  And  Jehovah  said, 
Go  up,  for  to-morrow  I  will  deliver  them 
into  thine  hand.  .  .  .  And  the  men  of 

Israel  turned  again  upon  the  children  of 
Benjamin,  and  smote  them  with  the  edge  of 


1  Deut.  13.15,  10. 

2  Order  of  the  day,  issued  by  General  Stenger,  commander 
of  the  38th  Brigade,  August  26,  1914. 

24 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


the  sword,  as  well  as  the  men  of  every  city, 
as  the  beast,  and  all  that  came  to  hand:  also 
they  set  on  fire  all  the  cities  that  they  came 
to.1”  “Ye  shall  be  his  warriors,  called  to  a 
costly  crusade  against  barbarism  and  cun¬ 
ning,  bestiality  and  fraud.  .  .  .  Brethren, 
make  an  end  of  this  generation  of  vipers 
with  German  blows  and  German  thrusts. 
So  deal  with  foes  who  like  highwaymen  have 
set  upon  us  that  they  may  never  again  be 
tempted  to  attack  German  men.”  2 

Or  compare  once  more  a  terrible  Hebrew 
poem  of  vengeance  with  still  more  terrible 
verses  published  in  1914.  The  Hebrew 
utterance  carries  us  back  to  the  ingenious 
cursing  of  Oriental  races  in  far  distant 
times:  “Let  his  children  be  fatherless,  and 
his  wife  a  widow.  Let  his  children  be  contin¬ 
ually  vagabonds,  and  beg :  .  .  .  Let  there 
be  none  to  extend  mercy  unto  him:  neither 
let  there  be  any  to  favor  his  fatherless  chil¬ 
dren.  Let  his  posterity  be  cut  off;  and  in 
the  generation  following  let  their  name  be 
blotted  out.  Let  the  iniquity  of  his  fathers 

1Judg.  20.  27sq. 

2  Pastor  Johann  Rump,  of  Berlin. 

25 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

4  . 

be  remembered  with  the  Lord;  and  let  not 
the  sin  of  his  mother  be  blotted  out.  .  .  . 

When  he  shall  be  judged,  let  him  be  con¬ 
demned  :  and  let  his  prayer  become  sin”1 
The  modern  poem  written  by  Heinrich 
Vierordt  in  1914  is  just  as  explicit  in  details 
and  identical  in  spirit: 

“O  Germany,  hate!  Salvation  will  come  of  thy 
wrath. 

Beat  in  their  skulls  with  rifle-butts  and  with  axes. 
These  bandits  are  beasts  of  the  chase,  they  are 
not  men. 

Let  your  clenched  fist  enforce  the  judgment  of 
God. 

Afterward  thou  wilt  stand  erect  on  the  ruins  of 
the  world. 

Healed  forever  of  thine  ancient  madness. 

And  of  thy  love  for  the  alien.” 

In  such  verses,  and  in  scores  of  others  like 
them,  we  see  clearly  that  the  religion  of 
some  modern  nations  is  simply  and  avowedly 
the  religion  of  Joshua  and  Gideon,  and  pro¬ 
fesses  no  advance  on  the  creed  of  the  He¬ 
brew  tribes  who  in  the  name  of  their  Deity 
saved  alive  nothing  that  breathed.  The  only 


1  See  Psalm  109. 


26 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


difference  is  that  Israel  sinned  in  darkness 
while  modern  men  sin  against  light. 

Here  let  us  digress  to  make  two  remarks. 
The  first  is  that  though  it  is  quite  natural  to 
reproach  ancient  religion  with  the  incite¬ 
ment  to  so  many  wars,  it  is  at  least  to  the 
credit  of  the  Hebrew  religion  that  it  did  in¬ 
cite  to  something.  Religion  clearly  mani¬ 
fested  itself  in  very  brutal  fashion  in  the  far 
centuries  before  Christ,  but  it  was  at  least  a 
power  to  be  reckoned  with.  It  was  never  a 
spectator  of  life’s  drama,  never  a  neutral  in 
the  great  contests  of  humanity.  It  may  have 
been — it  often  was — utterly  mistaken  in  its 
view  of  what  was  right,  but  never  for  a  mo¬ 
ment  did  it  admit  that  right  and  wrong  come 
out  at  the  same  place  in  the  end.  It  was 
never  an  invertebrate  and  languid  desire  for 
a  better  world,  but  a  determined  and  aggres¬ 
sive  attempt  to  better  the  world  we  have. 
The  religion  of  the  Pentateuch  was  at  times 
crude  and  violent,  but  it  was  at  least  more 
vital  and  achieving  than  a  set  of  propositions 
or  a  hope  for  a  good  time  coming.  It  was  a 
positive  and  achieving  force.  It  mightily 
stirred  up  the  old  world,  as  when  a  great 

27 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


wind  stirs  up  the  ocean,  bringing  to  light 
mire  and  dirt  as  well  as  pearls  and  sunken 
treasures.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  Israel’s  reli¬ 
gion  that  it  exposed  and  roused  and  ener¬ 
gized  Israel’s  soul.  While  the  Hebrew  reli¬ 
gion  did  stir  the  cruder  passions  of  men,  it 
also  gave  them  a  sense  of  brotherhood  and 
a  vision  of  the  eternal  righteousness  which 
lifted  them  little  by  little  into  the  light  of  a 
new  day.  Their  God  at  least  was  real  and 
active  on  the  side  of  right.  This  conviction 
made  the  Hebrew  prophets  the  moral  lead¬ 
ers  of  their  time — and  of  all  other  times  as 
well. 

The  other  remark  is  this :  the  modern  crit- 

% 

icism  of  the  Old  Testament  has  enabled  us 
to  view  all  the  fierce  “wars  of  Jehovah”  with 
no  loss  of  theistic  faith.  A  thousand  diffi¬ 
culties  that  pressed  upon  the  church  in  the 
days  of  Thomas  Paine  and  Robert  Ingersoll 
are  now  gone  forever.  The  “mistakes  of 
Moses”  trouble  no  one  to-day.  When  forty 
years  ago  the  Bible  was  seen  as  a  solid  block 
of  revelation,  every  sentence  divinely  ut¬ 
tered,  as  a  single  book  without  inner  devel¬ 
opment  of  thought,  the  wars  of  Jehovah 

28 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


were  a  burden  grievous  to  be  borne.  The 
only  explanation  offered  by  the  old  com¬ 
mentaries  is  that  the  Amorites  and  the  Hi- 
vites  and  the  Jebusites  deserved  to  be  killed 
off  anyway,  and  that  since  God  commanded 
the  slaughter,  we  his  subjects  have  no  right 
to  question  his  action.  Such  an  answer  was 
a  mere  evasion  and  an  incentive  to  doubt.  It 
was  not  even  up  to  the  level  of  Abraham’s 
perception  when  he  declared  that  even  “the 
judge  of  all  the  earth  shall  do  right.” 

But  modern  Biblical  study  has  relieved  us 
of  this  provocation  to  skepticism.  It  has 
taught  us  that  the  early  moral  development 
of  every  nation  includes  barbarous  codes  of 
duty  which  none  the  less  have  tremendous 
sanctions  behind  them.  It  has  shown  us  that 
the  prophets  were  right  in  regarding  their 
highest  moral  perceptions  as  a  “Thus  saith 
the  Lord,”  even  though  later  ages  should 
declare  that  the  law  was  given  merely  be¬ 
cause  of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts.  Israel 
never  received  a  divine  command  to  slaughter 
“everything  that  breatheth,”  but  Israel  did 
receive  command  to  oppose  the  foulness  of 
surrounding  idolatries  and  cleave  unto  its 

29 


I 


/ 

RELIGION  AND  WAR 

own  real  God,  and  the  only  way  of  doing  this 
appeared  to  be  the  method  then  adopted  by 
every  human  tribe — the  method  of  ruthless 
extermination.  Wrong  in  their  method, 
they  were  gloriously  right  in  their  cause. 
Cruel  in  their  means,  they  were  nobly  loyal 
in  their  end.  Jehovah  did  love  Israel,  did 
hate  Chemosh,  did  summon  David  from  fol¬ 
lowing  the  flocks,  and  did  say  to  that  age  and 
all  ages  to  come:  “Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord 
thy  God,  and  him  only  shalt  thou  serve.” 

But  is  this  all  that  we  can  say  regarding 
the  Old  Testament  attitude  toward  war — 
that  it  allowed  and  encouraged  and  com¬ 
manded  hostility  toward  all  outside  the 
chosen  race?  Far  from  it.  In  the  later 
documents  of  the  Old  Testament  we  find  the 
dawning  of  a  new  light  which  shines  still 
brilliantly  across  the  Christian  era.  In  the 
later  prophets  there  are  voices  that  proclaim 
a  noble  universalism,  that  affirm  Jehovah  to 
be  the  God  of  the  whole  earth,  and  strive  to 
lift  Israel  out  of  its  narrow  particularism 
and  make  it  a  light -bearer  to  the  nations. 
The  early  prophets  who  saw  in  Jehovah  only 
a  jealous  tribal  Deity,  who  believed  the  con- 

30 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


fines  of  Israel  to  be  the  boundaries  of  his 
love,  who  saw  no  means  of  propaganda  save 
military  invasion  and  no  mission  for  Israel 
save  through  the  extermination  of  her  foes, 
failed  utterly  to  save  Israel  from  continual 
dangers  which  ultimately  issued  in  national 
subjugation  and  exile.  The  sword  of  Gid¬ 
eon  and  Samuel  and  David  and  Solomon 
led  the  nation  to  transitory  triumphs  which 
were  ended  by  the  sword  of  Assyria. 

The  later  writings  of  the  Old  Testament 
show  a  double  tendency.  Some  of  them  still 
cling  to  the  old  narrow  particularism,  while 
others  lead  the  people  into  a  truly  interna¬ 
tional  horizon  and  a  world-wide  conception 
of  religion.  The  book  of  Esther,  which  does 
not  even  mention  the  name  of  God,  is  as  na¬ 
tionalistic  as  the  book  of  Judges.  Its  charm¬ 
ing  picture  of  woman’s  fidelity  to  her  race  is 
nevertheless  filled  with  the  exclusiveness  and 
relentlessness  of  a  narrow  sect.  The  ab¬ 
sence  of  God  from  this  book  means  the  ab¬ 
sence  of  humanity.  Ezekiel  in  his  glowing 
visions  of  a  reestablished  ceremonial  includes 
several  “hymns  of  hate” — against  Ammon 
and  Moab  and  Edom.  His  denunciation  of 

31 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


Tyre,  that  “sat  at  the  entry  of  the  sea,  the 
merchant  of  many  peoples  unto  the  isles,”  is 
a  magnificent  piece  of  Oriental  invective 
which  thrills  every  reader  to-day.  But  her 
traffickers  and  pilots  and  mariners  are  to  him 
beyond  the  pale  of  human  sympathy  or  di¬ 
vine  help. 

But  side  by  side  with  these  writings  we 
find  books  almost  Christian  in  their  outlook. 
The  book  of  Jonah  might  well  be  in  the  New 
Testament.  Its  great  message  of  the  uni¬ 
versality  of  God’s  love  has  been  sadly  ob¬ 
scured  by  futile  discussion  regarding  the 
anatomy  of  the  sea  monster.  But  its  real 
function  is  to  show  us  how  a  narrow  secta¬ 
rian  prophet,  sent  against  his  will  to  convert 
a  city  far  outside  of  Israel,  is  led  by  forces  be¬ 
yond  his  ken  into  the  proclamation  of  a  love 
that  is  “broader  than  the  measure  of  man’s 
mind,”  and  a  Divine  Providence  that  in¬ 
cludes  not  only  all  Ninevites  but  “also  much 
cattle.”  Those  last  three  words  in  the  book 
were  two  thousand  years  ahead  of  their  time. 

The  little  book  of  Ruth  takes  us  quite  out¬ 
side  the  borders  of  Israel  into  a  family  of  the 

despised  people  of  Moab.  As  we  see  the  fair 

32 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


young  Moabitess  standing  “amid  the  alien 
corn,”  we  feel  at  once  how  petty  was  the 
scorn  of  Israel  for  its  neighbors,  how  futile 
the  barriers  that  hatred  had  erected  between 
the  two  peoples.  Thousands  of  Christian 
exiles  have  repeated  her  words,  “Thy  people 
shall  be  my  people,  and  thy  God  my  God,” 
as  if  they  had  come  from  some  Christian 
apostle. 

But  it  is  the  writing  prophets  of  the  later 
period  and  the  singers  of  the  later  psalms 
who  are  the  true  internationalists.  Elijah 
was  plainly  and  simply  a  nationalist.  His 
duty  was  to  rebuke  one  king,  his  mission  was 
to  slay  the  false  prophets  of  a  single  king¬ 
dom.  Elisha  was  similarly  bounded  in  hori¬ 
zon  and  felt  no  call  to  any  work  beyond  Is¬ 
rael’s  narrow  walls.  But  the  prophecies  now 
grouped  under  the  name  of  Isaiah  glow  and 
throb  with  a  vaster  vision.  In  the  earlier 
chapters  of  Isaiah  we  read  of  “an  altar  to  Je¬ 
hovah  in  the  midst  of  the  land  of  Egypt,” 
and  of  the  coming  day  when  “nation  shall 
not  lift  up  sword  against  nation,  neither 
shall  they  learn  war  any  more.” 

But  it  is  in  the  second  Isaiah  that  we  find 

33 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

the  prophet  dilating  with  marvelous  wealth 
of  imagery  on  the  universal  rule  of  Jehovah 
and  his  direct  and  personal  relation  to  all  the 
peoples  of  the  world.  The  old  exclusiveness 
of  Joshua  and  Samuel  and  Elijah  has  quite 
vanished,  and  we  hear  new  words,  like  the 
strains  of  a  morning  song:  “How  beautiful 
upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  him  that 
.  .  .  publisheth  peace.”  And  that  peace  is 
to  be  so  deep  and  broad  as  to  include  even 
the  beasts  of  the  field  and  the  humblest 
plant.  “Instead  of  the  thorn  shall  come  up 
the  fir-tree;  and  instead  of  the  brier  shall 
come  up  the  myrtle-tree.”  Jehovah  is  no 
longer  a  local  Deity,  but  “the  God  of  the 
whole  earth  shall  he  be  called.”  Israel’s 
horizon  must  be  pushed  out:  “Enlarge  the 
place  of  thy  tent,  and  let  them  stretch  forth 
the  curtains  of  thine  habitations.”  The  old 
ceremonial  feasts  and  fasts  are  no  longer 
needful,  they  are  even  disdained  by  the 
prophet:  “To  spread  sackcloth  and  ashes 
under  him?  wilt  thou  call  this  a  fast,  and 
an  acceptable  day  to  the  Lord?”  Hence¬ 
forth  a  different  standard  is  to  prevail:  “Let 
the  oppressed  go  free,  .  .  .  and  break 

34 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


every  yoke,  .  .  .  and  I  will  cause  thee  to 
ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth.”  The 
petty  complicated  ceremonial  of  the  older 
days  gives  way  to  the  broad  ethical  demands 
of  the  new  prophecy.  Israel  was  no  longer 
the  monopolist  of  divine  favor  but  “a  witness 
to  the  peoples.”  Israel  was  saved  to  serve. 
The  nation  was  elected,  not  because  of  its 
deserts,  not  through  any  caprice  of  the  di¬ 
vine  will,  but  purely  as  a  missionary  nation, 
a  people  chosen  for  a  world-wide  service. 
Instead  of  boasting  of  divine  favors  Israel 
should  be  humbled  by  the  divine  summons  to 
serve  mankind. 

Hence  the  prophet  addresses  other  na¬ 
tions,  Egypt  and  Tyre  and  Babylon,  with  a 
new  note  in  his  message.  He  has  sympathy 
for  those  foreign  peoples,  some  admiration 
for  their  commerce,  their  civilization,  their 
manufacture.  The  great  prophet  of  the 
exile  sees  the  whole  sweep  of  human  history 
as  divinely  directed,  and  foretells  a 

.  .  .  divine  event, 

To  which  the  whole  creation  moves.” 

The  splendor  of  the  material  possessions  of 

35 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


other  nations  does  not  anger  him,  as  it  would 
have  angered  the  early  prophets.  Their 
beautiful  fabrics,  their  fragrant  spices,  their 
precious  stones  are  all  to  be  made  tributary 
to  the  one  great  kingdom  that  J ehovah  shall 
establish.  Though  the  center  of  that  king¬ 
dom  shall  be  at  Jerusalem,  yet  it  is  a  Jeru¬ 
salem  so  transformed  and  glorified  that  it  is 
made  the  spiritual  “mother  of  us  all.” 

Now  we  can  see  why  it  has  been  said  that 
“the  idea  of  a  Weltgeschichte  dates  from 
Isaiah.”  Everywhere  in  his  sublime  chap¬ 
ters  there  is  the  sense  of  universal  law  per¬ 
vading  human  life.  He  does  not  appeal  to 
any  miracles,  but  to  the  inevitable  sense  of 
God  in  human  history.  “Jehovah  sitteth  on 
the  circle  of  the  earth,”  and  the  whole  his¬ 
toric  process  is  the  revelation  of  his  im¬ 
manent  presence.  Hence  a  monarch  so  far 
outside  Israel  as  the  Persian  Cyrus  becomes 
the  divine  messenger,  and  Jehovah  says,  “I 
have  raised  him  up.”  Persian,  Assyrian, 
Egyptian,  Tyrian — all  are  included  in  the 
resistless  sweep  of  the  divine  purpose,  and 
the  history  of  the  whole  world  is  Jehovah’s 

judgment  on  the  world.  No  land  shall  es- 

36 


ATTITUDE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 


cape  his  justice  and  no  people  be  placed  out¬ 
side  the  circle  of  his  love. 

We  see,  then,  how  the  Old  Testament,  be¬ 
ginning  with  the  dark  barbarities  of  blood- 
revenge  and  tribal  warfare,  and  depicting 
war  as  the  normal  life  of  an  established  king¬ 
dom,  finally  reaches  a  higher  level  and  re¬ 
flects  the  first  gleam  of  the  coming  dawn.  It 
never  wholly  detaches  itself  from  the  sacred 
places  of  Judaism.  Israel’s  religion  remains 
a  kind  of  Zionism  still.  But  it  does  begin  to 
see  that  Jehovah  has  many  a  dwelling  place 
outside  of  Zion,  many  a  follower  in  Persia 
and  Egypt  and  the  isles  of  the  sea,  and  that 
somehow  and  at  some  time  the  thousand  wars 
of  old  shall  be  replaced  by  the  thousand 
years  of  peace. 


37 


Who  does  not  recognize  that  his  divine  Master 
could  be  manlikely  indignant?  Who  does  not  glory 
in  those  burning  words  of  hot  impatience  with 
which  Jesus  showed  that  he  could  not  abide  the 
meanness  of  canting  Pharisees  and  sophist  Sad- 
ducees?  Who  has  not  been  led  into  new  thoughts 
of  manly  life  by  hearing  Jesus  rebuke  Chorazin  and 
Bethsaida,  as  well  as  by  hearing  him  console  and 
forgive  the  adulteress?  We  must  not  let  these 
scenes  go  out  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  If  we  do,  we 
shall  forget  to  be  indignant  with  meanness  and 
oppression. 


— Phillips  Brooks. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  NEW 
TESTAMENT 

In  passing  from  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  New  Testament  we  pass  from  the  realm 
of  precepts  to  the  realm  of  ideals.  We 
can  no  longer  ask,  “What  is  written  in  the 
law?”  but,  rather,  “What  is  included  in 
the  moral  ideal  of  our  Leader?”  To  the 
prosaic  literalist  such  a  transition  is  dis¬ 
concerting  and  baffling.  We  find  in  the 
New  Testament  no  stone  tablets  “graven 
with  the  finger  of  God,”  no  definite  com¬ 
mands  as  to  kinds  of  seed  that  may  be  sown 
in  our  gardens,  as  to  the  architecture  of  a 
tabernacle,  as  to  the  organization  of  the 
people  for  worship  or  for  labor.  We  have 
left  behind  us  the  whole  network  of  definite 
precepts  which  covered  the  later  life  of 
Israel,  and  we  find  ourselves  in  the  free  air 
of  Christian  idealism.  We  find  men  no 

longer  saying,  “To  the  law  and  to  the  testi- 

41 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


mony,”  but  crying  with  a  new,  strange 
fervor,  “Let  us  go  with  Him  to  prison  and 
to  death.”  We  are  no  longer  looking  back 
to  the  sharp  outlines  of  Sinai,  but  forward  to 
a  visionary  City  of  God.  We  find  that  the 
old  minute  regulation  of  human  life  in  all  its 
details  has  been  sloughed  off,  and  in  its  place 
we  have  a  great  passion  of  loyalty  to  an  ideal 
embodied  in  a  Person.  If,  therefore,  we  ex¬ 
pect  the  Nazarene  to  tell  us  just  when  war  is 
justified  and  when  it  is  forbidden,  we  shall 
expect  a  vain  thing.  War  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  is  never  justified  and  never  explicitly 
forbidden. 

A  mere  surface  reading  of  the  Gospels,  a 
mere  collection  of  proof -texts  will  therefore 
lead  us  nowhere.  It  is  as  easy  to  quote  iso¬ 
lated  texts  on  the  one  side  as  on  the  other. 
The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  certainly  forbids 
retaliation.  It  contains  that  simple,  sweep¬ 
ing  injunction  which  changed  the  face  of  the 
world  for  Tolstoy:  “Resist  not  evil.”  It 
breathes  a  benediction  on  the  peacemakers. 
Jesus  again  and  again  uttered  sentences 
which  seem  to  threaten  the  annihilation  not 

only  of  war  but  of  government  itself.  “All 

42 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish  with  the 
sword.”  “My  kingdom  is  not  of  this 
world.”  ‘Tut  up  thy  sword  into  its  sheath.” 
“Whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on  the  right 
cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other.”  These  fam¬ 
ous  sayings,  uttered  without  qualification, 
admitting  neither  exception  nor  compromise, 
have  been  for  two  thousand  years  a  mitiga¬ 
tion  of  human  hatred,  a  code  of  action  liter¬ 
ally  adopted  by  some  religious  sects,  and  a 
standing  challenge  to  philosophers  and 
statesmen.  These  difficult  utterances,  as 
Harnack  tells  us,  have  for  centuries  been 
quoted  to  show  that  either  the  gospel  is  im¬ 
possible  or  that  the  church  is  now  unchris¬ 
tian.  Scornfully  the  thoughtless  world 
speaks  of  the  “other-cheekers.”  Ironically 
the  advocates  of  “red  blood” — which  some¬ 
times  seems  to  mean  blood  that  does  not  cir¬ 
culate  through  the  brain — ask  if  a  Christian 
is  to  be  merely  a  “mollycoddle.”  Some 
things  are  hidden  from  the  wise  and  prudent, 
though  revealed  to  a  carpenter’s  Son. 

Jesus  was  born  of  a  warlike  race  and  in  a 

land  that  still  echoed  with  the  tramp  of 

armies.  He  probably  saw  the  gleam  of 

43 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


Roman  spears  in  Galilee,  and  he  certainly 
often  met  the  Roman  legions  in  Jerusalem. 
The  Galilaeans  were  always  ready  for  mili¬ 
tary  revolt.  They  longed  to  emulate  the 
deeds  of  their  ancestors.  It  would  have 
been  easy  for  Jesus  to  join  the  Zealots  and 
lead  an  army  against  the  Roman  power. 
He  might  have  become  a  second,  and  per¬ 
haps  more  successful,  Judas  Maccabaeus. 
But  he  never  encouraged  the  smallest  mili¬ 
tary  or  political  revolt.  His  complete  re¬ 
nunciation  of  the  ordinary  method  of  revo¬ 
lution,  his  abstinence  from  the  usual  pro¬ 
grams  of  political  change,  have  often  been  a 
stumbling-block  to  violent  reformers.  Thus 
a  reputed  Chinese  official  wrote  of  Jesus: 
“Provincial  by  birth,  mechanic  by  trade; 
.  .  .  never  was  one  worse  equipped  to 
found  a  commonwealth.” 

But  if  proof-texts  are  to  be  our  authority, 
we  must  cite  them  all.  There  is  no  qualifica¬ 
tion  in  his  clear  statement,  “I  came  not  to 
send  peace,  but  a  sword.”  When  the  final 
clash  came  with  the  Roman  officers,  and  the 
terrified  disciples  were  looking  for  explicit 
direction,  he  gave  it:  “He  that  hath  no  sword, 

44 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


) 


let  him  sell  his  garment,  and  buy  one.”  No 
fiercer  invective  can  be  found  in  the  whole 
Old  Testament  than  the  words  which  came 
white-hot  and  hissing  from  the  Nazarene, 
when  he  faced  those  who  “devour  widows’ 
houses  and  for  a  pretense  make  long  pray¬ 
ers.”  When  he  found  such  double-faced 
leaders  in  the  forecourt  of  the  sacred  temple, 
he  did  not  rely  on  words  alone,  but  with  a 
brandished  whip  of  braided  cords  he  drove 
them  out  and  with  the  force  of  his  mind  and 
his  body  purified  the  national  shrine. 

Moreover,  Jesus  was  at  least  respectful  to  f  - 

a  government  founded  on  force.  He  paid 

taxes  to  support  a  tyrannical  government 

and  a  recreant  church,  and  on  one  occasion 

apparently  worked  a  miracle  in  order  to  pay 

them.  He  uttered  no  condemnation  of  King 

Herod,  and  to  the  governor,  Pilate,  he  said : 

“Thou  couldest  have  no  power  at  all  against 

me,  except  it  were  given  thee  from  above.” 

When  he  came  into  intimate  contact  with  the 

Roman  centurion,  he  commended  his  faith 

and  found  no  fault  with  the  profession  of  a 

soldier,  just  as  John  the  Baptist  bade  the 

soldiers  be  “content  with  their  wages,”  but 

45 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


in  no  way  condemned  the  taking  of  wages 
for  performance  of  the  soldier’s  task. 

The  balancing  of  proof-texts  evidently 
yields  us  no  result,  but  leaves  us — as  that 
method  of  research  always  has  done — per¬ 
plexed  and  irresolute.  Our  categories  of 
“pacifist”  and  “militarist”  do  not  fit  the 
facts.  As  in  all  great  spirits,  there  is  some¬ 
thing  in  Jesus  that  defies  our  labels,  some¬ 
thing  that  “breaks  through  language  and 
escapes.”  Some  other  method  we  must 
adopt  if  we  would  find  the  mind  of  the 
Master. 

But  if  we  are  willing  to  give  up  the  book¬ 
keeper’s  method  of  arranging  texts  in 
columns  and  attempting  to  strike  a  trial 
balance,  we  are  set  free  to  enter  sympathet¬ 
ically  into  the  ideal  and  purpose  of  our 
Lord.  If  we  could  look  on  life  through  his 
eyes,  surely  all  his  scattered  sayings  would 
lose  their  dissonance  and  melt  into  the  “lost 
chord”  which  the  struggling  world  so  needs 
to  recover.  Because  we  know  his  temper 
and  attitude  toward  life  we  are  very  sure  of 
some  things  that  his  hard  sayings  cannot 
mean. 


46 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


Whatever  the  vivid,  picturesque  pacifist 
teachings  of  J esus  may  mean,  they  surely  do 
not  mean  moral  cowardice.  To  find  in  them 
mere  avoidance  of  pain  and  toil,  mere  retreat 
from  danger,  is  to  give  the  lie  to  his  whole 
life.  No  possible  array  of  texts  could  make 
us  believe  that  Jesus  lived  in  fear  of  either 
Caiaphas  or  Herod.  It  is  the  militarist  who 
is  in  fear  and  therefore  rattles  the  saber  and 
indulges  in  "frantic  boast  and  foolish  word.” 
Jesus  may  have  been  impractical  when  he 
said,  "Resist  not  evil,”  but  surely  he  was  not 
afraid. 

The  hard  sayings  of  Jesus  cannot  mean 
the  passive  acceptance  of  evil  as  if  it  were 
good.  They  cannot  inculcate  the  duty  of 
neutrality  in  the  face  of  crying  injustice  and 
oppression.  They  cannot  mean  that  the 
Christian  is  to  sit  on  the  "bleachers”  of  life 
while  other  stronger  souls  plunge  into  the 
game.  They  cannot  be  meant  to  praise  a 
fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue.  They  can¬ 
not  mean  evasion  of  responsibility  and  a 
weak  refusal  to  take  sides  when  good  and 
evil  are  in  deadly  grapple.  When  we  read 

that  "Jesus  looked  round  about  him  with 

47 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


anger”  in  the  presence  of  the  hard-hearted 
Pharisees,  we  are  sure  he  was  not  a  moral 
neuter.  When  he  blazed  forth  with  vol¬ 
canic  speech,  “Ye  serpents,  ye  generation 
of  vipers,  how  can  ye  escape  the  damna¬ 
tion  of  hell?”  we  are  sure  that  if  he  did  not 
lay  violent  hands  on  human  beings,  it  was 
not  because  of  any  indifference  to  their 
deeds. 

His  hard  sayings  cannot  mean  the  loss  of 
self-respect  and  self -reverence.  Mere  abase¬ 
ment  in  the  presence  of  power,  the  Uriah 
Heep  attitude,  the  invertebrate  spirit  which 
cries  “Good  Lord”  and  “Good  devil”  with 
equal  facility,  which  has  no  convictions  to 
express  or  to  preserve — that  we  cannot  for 
a  moment  attribute  to  Him  who  said  of  the 
tyrant:  “It  were  better  for  him  that  a  mill¬ 
stone  were  hanged  about  his  neck,  and  that 
he  were  drowned  in  the  depth  of  the  sea.” 
The  quiet  dignity  of  Jesus  before  the  mob 
and  before  Pilate  assures  us  that  mere  self- 
effacement  at  another’s  command  was  no 
virtue  in  his  sight. 

The  pacifist  sayings  of  Jesus  cannot  mean 
the  abolition  of  all  human  values  and  the  ad- 

48 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


vocacy  of  social  anarchy.  He  evidently 
valued  the  home  as  a  human  institution  and 
was  loyal  to  it.  He  must  have  valued  the 
carpenter’s  trade  to  which  he  gave  so  many 
years.  He  liked  to  watch  the  laborers  in  the 
vineyard,  the  sowers  of  the  seed  following 
the  furrow,  the  fishermen  casting  their  nets 
and  gathering  of  every  kind.  Human  labor 
was  to  him  a  precious  thing.  He  never  in¬ 
culcated  a  Buddhistic  closing  of  the  eyes  and 
relaxing  of  human  effort.  No;  to  any  stu¬ 
dent  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  the  saying,  “Resist 
not  evil,”  and  all  the  sayings  that  go  with  it, 
never  can  mean  cowardice,  nor  easy  acquies¬ 
cence  in  wrong,  nor  weak  self-effacement, 
nor  indifference  to  the  precious  things  that 
are  threatened  by  evil  powers.  It  is  at  least 
good  to  clear  the  decks  by  casting  overboard 
suggestions  that  are  plainly  false.  We 
know  them  to  be  false  because  we  know  him 
to  be  true.  We  interpret  a  single  saying  by 
his  entire  life. 

“Did  Jesus  approve  or  condemn  war?”  we 
ask.  But  we  might  as  well  ask,  “Did  he  ap¬ 
prove  or  condemn  commerce,  or  taxation,  or 

government,  or  science,  or  art,  or  education, 

49 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


or  men  and  women?”  What  sort  of  com¬ 
merce  or  government  do  we  .mean?  What 
kind  of  warfare  do  we  refer  to?  Economic 
war  may  be  quite  as  disastrous  as  a  military 
campaign.  A  modern  boycott  may  produce 
far  more  suffering  than  did  an  ancient  battle. 
Jesus  certainly  did  approve  some  kinds  of 
persistent  aggressive  resistance  to  evildoers. 
His  whole  life  was  devoted  to  such  resistance. 
He  flagellated  the  hypocrites  and  oppressors 
of  the  common  people.  His  entire  career 
was  an  incarnation  of  the  precept  of  one  of 
his  disciples:  “Resist  the  devil  and  he  will 
flee  from  you.”  “Even  the  noble  example  of 
a  Tolstoy,”  says  Professor  Benjamin  W. 
Bacon,  “cannot  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  teaches  no  doctrine 
of  a  non-resistant  God.” 

We  cannot  in  our  thinking  separate  mili¬ 
tary  resistance  to  evil  from  all  other  kinds  of 
resistance,  because  in  actual  life  there  is  no 
such  separation.  Some  kinds  of  commerce, 
as  in  Africa,  have  been  more  deadly  than  any 
war  could  have  been.  Some  factory  systems 
have  drained  the  life-blood  out  of  employees, 

and  some  factory  towns  have  had  in  days  of 

50 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


peace  a  larger  death  rate  than  can  be  found 
in  the  trenches.  Certain  forms  of  taxation 
have  brought  hunger  and  death  to  the  poor 
and  made  social  and  moral  advance  impos¬ 
sible.  Some  kinds  of  manufacture,  as  for¬ 
merly  in  the  case  of  sulphur  matches,  have 
caused  diseases  as  dangerous  as  shrapnel 
wounds,  and  some  kinds  of  labor,  as  that  of 
the  underground  workers  in  caissons,  are  as 
perilous  as  service  in  a  battery  at  the  front. 
The  fierce  competitive  struggles  of  the  in¬ 
dustrial  world  have  slain  mute  thousands 
who  “now  rest  in  unvisited  graves.” 

But,  it  may  be  said,  this  is  not  what  we 

mean  by  war  proper,  which  is  the  application 

of  physical  force  to  a  man’s  body,  in  order  to 

change  his  mind.  Yet  such  an  application 

of  physical  force  in  order  to  restrain  a  man’s 

will  or  change  his  purpose  is  seen  whenever 

a  policeman  restrains  a  burglar  or  a  squad 

of  policemen  holds  a  mob  at  bay.  It  is  seen 

whenever  a  strong  man  snatches  his  wife  or 

child  from  the  grasp  of  a  ruffian.  It  was 

seen  when  Christian  missionaries  at  Peking 

sheltered  their  women  from  the  Boxer  mobs 

raging  just  outside  the  gate.  Tolstoy  is  per- 

51 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


fectly  logical  and  consistent.  He  sees  that 
the  condemnation  of  all  warfare,  however 
great  may  be  the  cause  and  however  awful 
the  evil  which  confronts  us,  inevitably  means 
the  refusal  of  the  individual  man  to  protect 
women  and  children,  the  weak  and  the  help¬ 
less,  from  every  form  of  physical  violence, 
and  means  the  total  abolition  of  police  pro¬ 
tection  and  of  all  authoritative  government 
throughout  the  world.  With  admirable  lu¬ 
cidity  Tolstoy  has  shown  us  the  dread  alter¬ 
native.  Either  we  must  say  that  there  are 
rare  times  when  resistance  to  evil  requires 
that  a  man’s  total  personality — body  and 
soul,  reason  and  emotion,  and  hands  and  feet 
— must  be  flung  against  the  evildoer,  or  we 
must  say  that  all  forcible  protection  of  the 
weak  is  wrong  and  all  authoritative  govern¬ 
ment  is  anti-Christian.  Ninety-nine  out  of 
every  hundred  of  the  wars  of  the  world  may 
be  evil  and  only  evil,  unredeemed  by  any 
high  aim  on  either  side.  But  to  say  that  the 
hundredth  contest  is  of  the  same  complexion, 
and  that  no  possible  armed  conflict  can  ever 
have  any  justice  on  either  side,  is  to  make  the 

Christian  teaching  irrational  and  impossible 

52 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


— which  is  just  what  some  men  desire  to  do. 
We  refuse  a  religion  which  makes  Jesus  in¬ 
dorse  and  approve  all  the  “wars  of  Jehovah” 
or  the  wars  of  Napoleon.  We  equally  re¬ 
fuse  a  religion  which  confines  all  resistance 
of  evil  to  a  closet  meditation  or  a  lachrymose 
lament. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  reformers — those 
who  oppose  the  symptoms  of  disease  and 
those  who  search  for  the  causes  of  disease 
and  seek  to  remove  them.  Both  kinds 
are  needed,  but  the  Founder  of  Christianity 
deliberately  chooses  to  deal  with  causes 
rather  than  results.  In  medicine  the  half- 
trained  physician,  when  called  to  cure  a 
fever,  seeks  merely  to  reduce  the  tempera¬ 
ture  by  external  applications.  He  knows 
little  about  the  cause  and  cannot  deal  with  it. 
But  the  bacteriologist,  hidden  in  his  labora¬ 
tory,  has  no  time  for  bags  of  ice  or  soothing 
lotions.  He  is  finding  the  germ,  determin¬ 
ing  its  nature  and  habits,  and  by  a  single 
generalization  may  prevent  an  epidemic  that 
would  have  taken  a  thousand  lives.  He  may 
never  see  a  patient  or  take  a  fee,  but  he  may 

banish  yellow  fever  from  a  continent.  Not 

53 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


the  hospital,  but  the  laboratory,  is  the  great 
need  of  the  suffering  world. 

In  social  reform  there  are  two  kinds  of 
workers — those  who  open  the  soup  kitchen, 
or  establish  the  bread  line,  or  drop  money  in 
the  beggar’s  hat,  and  those  who  promulgate 
a  finer  ideal  of  social  relations  and  spread  a 
new  spirit  throughout  the  social  order.  He 
who  establishes  a  juster  relation  between  the 
house  of  have  and  the  house  of  want  may  win 
no  popular  applause  and  leave  behind  him 
no  sumptuous  building  to  bear  his  name ;  but 
by  preventive  effort  he  has  done  more  to 
benefit  the  world  than  if  he  had  given  free 
luncheons  in  a  hundred  cities.  Mrs.  Brown¬ 
ing,  when  she  wrote  “The  Cry  of  the  Chil¬ 
dren,”  did  more  for  English  childhood  than 
if  she  had  opened  many  orphan  asylums. 
Dickens’s  Christmas  Carol  was  a  greater  hu¬ 
man  gift  than  the  hanging  of  costly  presents 
on  a  thousand  Christmas  trees.  Abraham 
Lincoln  emancipated  four  million  slaves 
without  a  personal  attack  on  a  single  slave- 
driver.  It  is  the  petty  mind  that  exhausts 
itself  in  direct  assault  upon  a  single  evildoer 
or  a  single  institution;  it  is  the  deep-souled, 

54 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


large-visioned  leader  who  creates  conditions 
in  which  the  evildoer  cannot  prosper  and  the 
poisonous  institution  shrivels  up  and  decays. 
The  real  leader  of  men  deals  with  roots,  not 
fruits. 

Jesus  did  not  have  a  word  to  say  regard¬ 
ing  the  concrete  flagrant  evils  which  have 
often  enlisted  the  stoutest  efforts  of  his  fol¬ 
lowers.  Slavery  elicited  from  him  no  direct 
protest.  The  method  of  John  Brown  at 
Harper’s  Ferry  would  have  been  even  more 
hopeless  in  the  first  century  than  it  was  in  the 
nineteenth.  The  publican  Zacchseus  was  in¬ 
duced  to  repent  and  make  restitution,  but 
the  iniquity  of  the  Roman  taxgathering  re¬ 
ceived  no  explicit  rebuke.  The  woman  who 
was  a  sinner  was  received  into  fellowship, 
and  her  alabaster  box  has  sent  its  fragrance 
round  the  world ;  but  J esus  led  no  raid  upon 
any  house  in  which  such  sinners  congregate. 
To  organize  a  posse  and  attack  one  slave¬ 
holder,  one  extortioner,  one  prostitute — that 
is  easy ;  that  creates  a  great  noise  and  is  soon 
forgotten.  But  to  introduce  a  new  attitude 
into  human  hearts,  which  shall  ultimately 

make  these  concrete  evils  seem  futile  or  de- 

55 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


testable — that  is  the  far  finer  work  of  the 
thinkers  and  saviours  of  humanity. 

Jesus  delivered  a  frontal  attack  upon 
race  prejudice  and  racial  arrogance,  which 
two  things  have  been  the  source  of  most  of 
the  wars  of  the  world.  He  would  conquer 
those  insidious  foes  not  only  by  verbal  con¬ 
demnation  but  by  replacing  them  with  the 
great  conception  of  human  brotherhood. 
That  scorn  for  unlikeness,  that  disparage¬ 
ment  of  difference,  which  has  often  set  king¬ 
doms  and  races  against  one  another,  he 
sought  to  replace  by  a  new  conception  of 
unity  in  variety — “to  one  man  ten  talents,  to 
another  two,  to  another  one.”  The  division 
between  Orient  and  Occident  which  has  led 
superficial  thinkers  to  say,  “Never  the  twain 
shall  meet,”  he  met  with  a  glowing  picture  of 
the  time  when  they  shall  come  from  the  east 
and  the  west,  the  north  and  the  south  to  sit 
down  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  bitter 
spirit  of  an  exclusive  nationalism  he  con¬ 
demned  when  he  faced  the  Jewish  leaders 
and  cried,  “God  is  able  of  these  stones  to 
raise  up  children  unto  Abraham.”  He  was 

attached  to  his  nation  and  its  capital.  He 

56 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


could  weep  over  Jerusalem,  as  the  exiled 
Dante  over  Florence  when  he  saw  its  ideals 
forsaken  and  its  doom  near.  He  seldom,  if 
ever,  went  outside  of  little  Palestine.  But 
his  thoughts  spread  out  far  beyond  those 
narrow  boundaries,  as  “a  fruitful  vine  whose 
branches  run  over  the  wall.”  The  despised 
Samaritan  woman,  condemned  by  race¬ 
hatred  even  more  than  by  lack  of  character, 
engaged  his  sympathy,  and  their  noonday 
conversation  at  the  well-curb  will  outlast  the 
conversations  of  Socrates  and  his  friends  in 
the  Athenian  jail  at  the  hour  of  sunset.  The 
Syrophoenician  woman  found  his  ear  as 
readily  as  if  she  had  been  born  in  Nazareth. 
The  instinctive  antipathies  of  men,  founded 
on  peculiarities  of  skin  and  hair  and  accent 
and  custom,  became  in  the  presence  of  Jesus 
childish  and  irrational,  and  all  tribes  and 
nations  were  potentially  included  in  the 
simple  statement,  “All  ye  are  brethren.” 

Another  root  of  war — some  would  have  us 

believe  the  chief  one — is  economic.  Men 

fight  not  from  mere  instinctive  antipathies, 

we  are  told,  but  from  a  sight  of  possessions 

just  beyond  their  reach.  The  “outs”  ever 

57 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


desire  to  be  the  “ins” ;  they  will  get  who  have 
the  power,  and  the  persistent  cause  of  war  is 
economic  greed.  Well,  did  any  teacher  ever 
deliver  stronger  assaults  on  base  and  debas¬ 
ing  greed  than  did  the  Nazarene?  The 
prophet  who  had  nowhere  to  lay  his  head 
showed  all  men  how  to  sit  loose  to  posses¬ 
sions,  how  to  rise  superior  to  all  physical 
deprivation.  Aristotle  believed  a  man  could 
not  attain  the  highest  character  without 
property.  His  “great-souled  man”  would 
lose  his  virtue  in  some  measure  if  he  lost  his 
goods.  But  Jesus  found  models  in  creatures 
that  “have  neither  storehouse  nor  barn”  and 
in  flowers  that  “toil  not,  neither  do  they 
spin.”  “Blessed  are  the  poor”  is  a  saying 
that  men  have  thought  it  wise  to  dilute  into 
“Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit.”  “Woe  unto 
you  that  are  rich”  is  a  passage  on  which  we 
seldom  deem  it  prudent  to  discourse. 

As  for  the  exactions  and  oppressions  of 

human  greed,  Jesus  could  not  abide  them. 

The  lust  of  power  seemed  to  him  both 

pathetic  and  terrible.  The  man  who  “took 

his  fellow  servant  by  the  throat”  is  pilloried 

forever  in  a  famous  parable.  “Which  is  the 

58 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


greatest,”  Jesus  queried,  “he  that  waiteth  on 
table  or  he  that  sitteth  as  guest  of  honor? 
But  I  am  among  you  as  waiter.”  If  war 
comes  from  greed,  whether  of  princes  or 
peoples,  Jesus  was  the  greatest  of  all  the 
opponents  of  war.  “Those  who  defend 
war,”  said  Erasmus,  “must  defend  the  dis¬ 
positions  which  lead  to  war,  and  these  dis¬ 
positions  are  absolutely  forbidden  by  the 
gospel.”  When  the  Christian  disposition 
prevails  among  men,  they  cannot  fight. 
Their  antagonistic  desires  are  seen  in  pro¬ 
cess  of  reconciliation.  Their  interests  may 
conflict  at  the  surface,  but  below  them  is  a 
deep  and  permanent  unity,  as  of  trees  whose 
branches  chafe  and  clash  in  the  wind,  but 
whose  hidden  roots  are  intertwined.  If  the 
world-order  which  Jesus  desired  and  fore¬ 
told  could  be  introduced  on  earth,  all  wars 
would  automatically  and  inevitably  cease. 

But  it  is  said  that  Jesus  did  not  foresee  the 

long  evolution  of  humanity  and  hence  did 

not  provide  for  the  age-long  conflicts  which 

human  progress  involves.  He  expected  the 

end  of  the  age  was  to  come  at  once,  and 

therefore  his  ethics  is  “end  ethics” — the 

59 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

peaceful  exhortations  of  a  man  who  did  not 
think  it  worth  while  to  revolt.  In  other 
words,  as  M.  Wilfred  Monod  has  said, 
“Jesus  is  a  Noah  who  is  mistaken  as  to  the 
time  of  the  deluge  and  to  whom  therefore  the 
ark  is  worthless.'’  Certainly  John  Stuart 
Mill  did  not  believe  in  the  imminent  ending 
of  the  world,  yet  he  said:  “Not  even  now 
would  it  be  easy,  even  for  an  unbeliever,  to 
find  a  better  translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue 
from  the  abstract  to  the  concrete  than  to  en¬ 
deavor  so  to  live  that  Christ  would  approve 
our  life.”  1 

There  can  be  no  greater  fallacy  than  to 
suppose  that  an  ethical  system  must  be  aban¬ 
doned  if  there  be  discovered  any  error  in  the 
founder’s  time-table.  “Of  that  day  and  hour 
knoweth  no  man  .  .  .  not  even  the  Son,” 
said  Jesus,  but  his  ignorance  of  the  time  could 
make  no  essential  difference  in  his  funda¬ 
mental  attitude  toward  life.  “If  Jesus  ex¬ 
pected,”  writes  Professor  Shailer  Mathews, 
“that  the  Kingdom  would  be  established 
by  catastrophe — and  after  all  legitimate 
allowance  is  made  for  apostolic  coloring 


1  Theism,  p.  235. 


60 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


in  the  reports  of  his  words,  it  is  not  im¬ 
probable  that  this  was  in  his  expectations — 
such  a  catastrophe  was  not  central  in  his 
teachings.”1  It  is  right  to  do  right,  whether 
we  work  in  the  morning  hours  or  are  facing 
an  evening  sky.  Justice,  truth,  and  love  do 
not  depend  on  how  many  minutes  the  hour¬ 
glass  has  to  run.  When  Francis  of  Assisi, 
playing  a  game  of  chess,  was  asked  what  he 
would  do  if  he  knew  the  Lord  would  come 
again  that  night,  he  answered:  “Finish  the 
game;  for  his  glory  I  began  it.”  Christ’s 
eschatology  may  not  have  been  ours ;  on  that 
the  record  is  not  clear.  Probably  he  did  ex¬ 
pect  a  speedier  end  of  the  age  than  we  can 
expect.  But  his  eschatology  could  not  trans¬ 
form  his  ethics.  He  did  not  know  the  times 
or  the  seasons,  but  he  did  know  the  purpose 
and  the  goal  of  life;  he  did  know  the  char¬ 
acter  which  can  alone  save  individuals  from 
greed  and  envy  and  save  nations  from  fra¬ 
tricidal  strife. 

We  must  never  abandon  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  merely  because  it  seems  impossible. 
Suchteachingis  quite  impossible  on  the  lower 

xThe  Gospel  and  the  Modern  Man,  p.  253. 

61 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


levels  of  existence.  It  appears  fantastic  in¬ 
deed  to  the  hard-headed  men  who  have  re¬ 
duced  all  life  to  physical  terms,  all  history 
to  a  struggle  of  beasts  “that  tear  each  other 
in  the  slime,”  and  all  politics  to  the  precepts 
of  Machiavelli.  How  should  men  living  in 
the  basement  see  the  horizon  that  is  visible 
from  the  roof  or  the  watchtower?  “If  life,” 
says  Professor  P.  T.  Forsyth,  “be  a  comedy 
to  those  that  think,  and  a  tragedy  to  those 
that  feel,  it  is  a  victory  to  those  that  believe.” 
Without  the  capacity  to  believe  in  ideals  and 
by  believing  make  them  come  true  no  nation 
can  rise  above  barbarism.  With  belief  in  the 
Christian  ideal  of  humanity  any  nation  may 
rise  into  a  region  where  war  shall  seem  the 
crowning  absurdity  and  horror,  never  to  be 
undertaken  until  all  other  kinds  of  resist¬ 
ance  have  been  explored  to  the  uttermost 
and  all  possible  modes  of  reconciliation  have 
been  exhausted.  Then  if  war  must  come, 
and  again  the  whip  of  small  cords  must  be 
braided,  and  again  the  temple  purified,  it 
will  be  with  a  “Father,  forgive  them,”  that 
we  strike. 

We  need  not  dwell  long  on  the  remainder 

62 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


of  the  New  Testament,  since  the  ethics  of  the 
apostles  is  necessarily  derivative  and  subor¬ 
dinate  to  the  ethics  of  Jesus.  Out  of  Paul’s 
numerous  references  to  the  soldier’s  life,  to 
governments,  to  slavery  and  to  social  prob¬ 
lems  we  find  it  again  difficult  to  construct  a 
single  consistent  formula.  His  was  surely  a 
flaming  spirit,  intense,  impetuous,  sweeping 
resistless  to  its  goal.  He  appreciated  to  the 
full  the  soldier’s  equipment  and  attitude. 
The  whole  armor  of  God  is  described  piece 
by  piece  and  with  evident  enjoyment  of  ef¬ 
fective  weapons.  “A  good  soldier,”  “a  man 
that  warreth” — such  is  his  ideal  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian.  He  was  on  excellent  terms  with  the 
chief  captain  and  the  soldiers  who  rescued 
him  from  the  mob  in  Jerusalem  and  with  the 
centurion  in  whose  charge  he  sailed  from 
Ceesarea  for  Rome.  Nowhere  does  he  by 
any  act  or  word  reflect  upon  the  soldier’s 
life  as  an  unrighteous  calling.  Facing  gov¬ 
ernors  and  kings  who  were  supported  by 
Roman  might  and  accompanied  by  full¬ 
armed  troops,  he  seems  to  have  accepted  the 
use  of  force  as  essential  to  government.  In 

all  his  long  journeys  he  was  under  the  pro- 

63 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


tection  of  the  Roman  power  and  always 
speaks  with  respect  of  constituted  authority. 

And  in  his  epistles  he  goes  so  far  in  re¬ 
conciling  himself  with  the  imperial  power 
that  he  may  easily  be  misconstrued.  “Fear 
God,  honor  the  king,”  “Submit  yourselves 
to  every  ordinance  of  man,”  “The  powers 
that  be  are  ordained  of  God” — these  sayings 
have  been  highly  esteemed  by  every  absolute 
monarch  in  Christendom.  We  do  not  hear 
of  Paul’s  rebuking  Festus  or  King  Agrippa, 
as  Nathan  rebuked  David  or  Elijah  threat¬ 
ened  Ahab.  The  great  leaders  in  the  asser¬ 
tion  of  human  liberty  have  gone  to  the 
rugged  Old  Testament  prophets  for  ex¬ 
ample  and  inspiration,  rather  than  to  the  ur¬ 
bane  New  Testament  apostle. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  he  declined,  as  did 
Jesus,  to  rely  on  physical  force  as  essential 
to  the  achievement  of  moral  ends.  Amid 
perils  of  robbers  and  perils  in  the  wilderness 
and  perils  among  false  brethren  he  went  ap¬ 
parently  unarmed.  “Our  weapons  are  not 
carnal,”  he  wrote  to  Corinth.  “As  much  as 
in  you  lieth,”  he  said  to  the  Romans,  “be  at 
peace  with  all  men.”  “Now  ye  also  put  off 


64 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


all  these:  anger,  wrath,  malice,  .  .  .  put 

on  .  .  .  meekness,  humbleness  of  mind, 

long-suffering” — so  he  wrote  to  Colosse. 
He  has  much  to  say  on  the  endurance  of  evil 
with  patience  and  serenity.  Though  a  He¬ 
brew  of  the  Hebrews,  he  cannot  brook  a  nar¬ 
row  nationalism.  Greek  and  Jew,  Barbar¬ 
ian  and  Scythian,  are  all  the  same  in  God’s 
sight.  The  real  Israelites  are  not  all  born  in 
Israel.  The  sturdy  Roman  officers,  the  pol¬ 
ished  students  of  Tarsus  and  Antioch,  the 
barbarous  people  on  the  island  of  Malta — he 
could  associate  with  them  all  on  terms  of  true 
equality. 

Paul’s  treatment  of  the  runaway  slave 

Onesimus  has  proved  a  stumbling-block  to  all 

those  who  demand  authoritative  precepts 

rather  than  inspiring  ideals.  It  would  have 

been  easy  to  arm  the  slave  against  his  master 

and  bid  him  defend  his  new-found  liberty.  It 

would  have  been  a  simple  matter  to  gather 

groups  of  Christian  slaves  and  train  them  for 

self-defense.  To  incite  revolution  in  the 

streets  of  Jerusalem  and  in  the  catacombs  of 

Rome  would  have  been  vastly  easier  than  to 

preserve  the  poise  of  one  who  deems  the  liber- 

65 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


ation  of  the  spirit  far  more  important  than 
physical  release.  To  deserve  and  preserve 
the  respect  and  courtesy  of  the  Roman  mag¬ 
istrates,  and  at  the  same  time  preach  a  doc¬ 
trine  which  must  ultimately  unseat  them,  ab¬ 
rogate  their  laws  and  destroy  their  empire — 
that  was  the  task  and  the  achievement  of  the 
apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  Perhaps  his  attitude 
may  be  interpreted  by  that  of  the  great 
French  writer,  Romain  Rolland.  Driven  out 
of  France  by  popular  disapproval  because  he 
tried  to  believe  in  and  express  a  human 
brotherhood  which  might  survive  the  present 
war,  he  quietly  took  up  his  abode  in  Switzer¬ 
land.  There  he  continued  to  speak  as  a 
Christian  of  the  first  century  might  have 
spoken  when  the  legions  of  Caesar  were  flash¬ 
ing  their  eagles  in  the  sun.  Before  the  war 
had  begun  he  wrote  words  which  should 
never  be  forgotten:  “I  am  not  a  soldier  in  the 
army  of  force ;  I  am  a  soldier  in  the  army  of 
the  spirit.  ...  I  will  not  be  a  party  to 
hatred.  I  will  be  just  to  all  my  enemies.  In 
the  midst  of  passion  I  wish  to  preserve  the 
clarity  of  my  vision,  to  understand  and  love 
everything.  .  .  .  Hatred  is  more  deadly 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


than  war,  for  it  is  an  infection  produced  by 
its  wounds,  and  it  does  as  much  harm  to  him 
it  possesses  as  to  him  it  pursues.” 

The  epistles  of  Peter  and  James  and  John 
are  full  of  this  spirit  of  reconciliation,  of 
brotherhood,  of  world- wide  democracy.  They 
are  stern  and  uncompromising  with  evil,  but 
they  suggest  no  social  or  political  agitation. 
The  Apocalypse  contains  many  pictures  of 
mighty  combat  in  the  well-known  style  of 
such  writings,  and  we  cannot  at  this  distance 
determine  the  meaning  of  the  lurid  visions. 
But  we  know  that  out  of  the  conflicts  comes 
victory  over  the  beast,  and  the  peace  and  joy 
and  song  of  a  celestial  city.  The  nations  of 
the  earth  are  to  bring  their  honor  and  glory 
through  many  gates  into  the  one  city,  and 

“Forget  long  hates  in  one  consummate  love.” 

Our  study  of  the  New  Testament  shows 
us,  then,  that  Christianity  abhors  and  rejects 
war  as  a  settlement  of  disputes  or  a  means  of 
progress.  It  knows  a  finer,  nobler  way  of 
reaching  momentous  decision.  It  Cannot 
condone  deception,  theft,  maiming,  murder, 
because  these  things  are  done  in  uniform  and 

67 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


to  the  waving  of  gorgeouys  banners.  It  strips 
off  the  tinsel  and  the  gold  lace  from  warfare 
and  shows  us  the  horrid  savagery  which  too 
often  is  done  in  the  name  of  justice  and 
mercy.  Yet  Christianity  has  no  opposition 
to  governments  maintained  by  force  or  to  the 
protection  of  weakness  by  strength.  It  bids 
us  resist  the  devil  and  all  his  works,  and  that 
resistance  may  demand  the  total  personality, 
soul  and  body,  of  a  man  or  a  nation.  The 
individual  may  be  forced  to  repel  a  burglar 
by  descending  for  a  moment  to  the  burglar’s 
physical  level  and  using  the  burglar’s  own 
weapons.  But  if  the  individual  stops  there, 
he  merely  becomes  like  the  intruder  he  would 
repel.  If  he  be  true  citizen,  much  more  true 
Christian,  he  will  at  once  proceed  to  over¬ 
come  the  evildoer  with  good.  He  will  lay 
plans  to  reclaim  and  reform  him  and  receive 
him  back  some  day  into  genuine  human  fel¬ 
lowship.  America  followed  that  method 
when  it  sent  its  troops  to  repel  the  infuriated 
Boxers,  and  later  sent  back  a  huge  indemnity 
fund  and  offered  to  educate  Chinese  students 
in  its  own  schools  and  colleges.  To  shoot  was 

needful  to  preserve  life,  but  to  pass  beyond 

68 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


shooting  into  educating  was  necessary  to  pre¬ 
serve  the  Christian  ideal  of  the  nation.  We 
must  let  loose  on  the  world  the  resistless 
transforming  forces  of  Christian  love. 

For  the  government  of  the  United  States 
to  offer  no  impediment  to  the  government  of 
Germany  in  its  ravishment  of  Belgium,  its 
sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  its  torpedoing  of 
hospital  ships,  its  deportations  and  mutila¬ 
tions,  would  make  the  United  States  an  ac¬ 
complice  in  these  crimes.  F or  two  and  a  half 
years  we  tried  to  impede  by  written  protests. 
Then  we  began  to  realize  that  our  words 
were  as  idle  tales  to  Germany  unless  we 
could  act  as  well  as  talk.  We  realized  that 
our  speech  was  insincere  and  our  indignation 
but  feigned  unless  we  should  oppose  the  total 
force  of  our  people — moral,  social,  financial, 
physical — to  the  monstrous  Thing  that  was 
trampling  down  the  weak  peoples  of  Eu¬ 
rope.  Such  opposition  is  not  merely  per¬ 
mitted,  it  is  demanded,  by  Christianity. 

But  Christianity  can  never  stop  with  mere 
opposition  to  evil.  It  seeks  to  overcome  the 
evil  with  good,  and  ultimately  to  incorporate 

the  evildoer  again  in  the  circle  of  humanity. 

69 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


The  state  wins  a  war  when  it  has  adminis¬ 
tered  a  military  defeat.  Christianity  never 
wins  until  it  has  changed  the  mind  and  heart 
of  the  enemy.  It  uses  physical  force  as  the 
necessary  means  to  a  moral  triumph.  It 
looks  beyond  the  capture  of  guns  and  men  to 
the  defeat  of  the  lust  for  world-dominion, 
and  to  the  establishment  of  the  principle  that 
greatness  among  nations,  as  among  indi¬ 
viduals,  is  measured  simply  by  capacity  and 
willingness  to  serve  in  the  cause  of  all  hu¬ 
manity. 

Love  is  never  weak  submission  to  wrong. 
“Of  course  mere  pacifism  is  not  Christianity. 
A  nation  that  wished  to  test  Jesus’  faith  in 
love  would  have  to  do  more  than  refuse  to 
fight.”1  Such  a  nation  would  have  to  clothe 
itself  in  a  passionate  devotion  to  human  wel¬ 
fare  which  would  be  a  true  “Flammen- 
werfer  ”  throwing  afar  its  heat  and  light.  It 
would  have  to  be  as  enthusiastic  in  service  as 

i 

others  have  been  in  conquest.  It  would  dare 
to  show  collectively  and  on  a  vast  scale  the 
very  virtues  that  we  prize  most  in  a  single 

1  Soares,  “Social  Institutions  and  Ideals  of  the  Bible,”  p. 
354. 

70 


ATTITUDE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT 


human  being.  It  would  dare  to  accept 
Christ’s  ideal  at  any  cost  and  live  it  out.  It 
would  amaze  the  world  and  become  the 
pioneer  of  human  progress.  It  would  show 
the  world  that  the  song  once  heard  over 
Bethlehem  may  yet  become  the  international 
anthem  of  humanity. 

“Rejoice,  O  world  of  troubled  men. 

For  peace  is  coming  back  again. 

•  ••••• 

And  men  will  wonder  over  it. 

This  red  upflaming  of  the  pit, 

And  they  will  gather  as  friends  and  say: 

‘Come  let  us  try  the  Master’s  way. 

Ages  we  tried  the  way  of  swords, 

And  earth  is  weary  of  hostile  hordes: 

Comrades,  read  his  words  again, 

They  are  the  only  hope  for  men. 

Love,  and  not  hate,  must  come  to  birth, 

Christ,  and  not  Cain,  must  rule  the  earth.’ ,n 


1  Edwin  Markham. 


Secret  retributions  are  always  restoring  the  level, 
when  disturbed,  of  the  divine  justice.  It  is  im¬ 
possible  to  tilt  the  beam.  All  the  tyrants  and 
proprietors  and  monopolists  of  the  world  in  vain 
set  their  shoulders  to  heave  the  bar.  Settles  ever¬ 
more  the  ponderous  equator  to  its  line. 

— Emerson. 

Keep  yourself  easy,  for  all  things  are  governed 
by  the  universal  nature.  Besides,  you  will  quickly 
go  the  way  of  all  flesh,  as  Augustus  and  Hadrian 
have  done  before  you. 


Marcus  Aurelius . 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  PACIFISM  OF  THE 
RATIONALISTS 

Sitting  in  my  library  by  the  light  of  the 
evening  lamp,  I  sometimes  gaze  up  at  the 
crowded  shelves  and  ask  what  all  those  dead 
authors  had  to  say  on  the  great  problem  of 
war  and  peace.  Quietly  the  books  now  re¬ 
pose  side  by  side,  but  as  regards  this  great 
problem  their  writers  were  often  as  far 
asunder  as  the  east  is  from  the  west.  Which 
of  them  were  against  war,  as  a  calamity  and 
absurdity,  and  which  of  them  regarded  war 
as  a  necessity  for  the  discipline  and  educa¬ 
tion  of  the  nations?  Which  of  the  thinkers, 
dreamers,  prophets,  poets,  were  truly  inter¬ 
national  in  their  world-view,  and  which  of 
them  were  egoistic,  provincial,  chauvinist, 
anti-Christian?  Who  have  been  the  prot- 
estants  and  who  the  apologists  ? 

When  we  ask  that  question  we  come  at 

once  upon  a  startling  paradox.  The  great 

75 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


advocates  of  the  substitution  of  reason  for 
force,  the  great  believers  in  international 
amity  and  cooperation,  have  often  been  re¬ 
jecters  of  the  Christian  faith,  and  the  proph¬ 
ets  of  that  faith  have  often  been  the  ardent 
apologists  of  war.  On  the  serried  shelves 
we  can  see  the  works  of  August  Comte  and 
Hume  and  Rousseau  and  Buckle  and  Her¬ 
bert  Spencer,  pleading  for  the  enthronement 
of  reason  above  force,  denouncing  war  as  a 
brutal  survival  of  the  past;  and  beside  them 
are  the  writings  of  many  ecclesiastics  from 
all  Christian  churches,  affirming  that,  in  the 
last  analysis,  government  always  rests  upon 
force,  and  that  Christian  nations  can  never 
by  any  advance  in  character  or  legislation 
escape  the  final  appeal  unto  Caesar.  The 
chief  prophet  of  a  necessary  change  from  a 
militant  to  an  industrial  civilization  is  Her¬ 
bert  Spencer,  while  the  classic  defense  of  war 
is  the  famous  sermon  of  Canon  Mozley. 

Even  to-day  the  loudest  voices  in  the  cause 
of  world  peace  are  usually  the  non-Christian 
voices.  It  is  Jean  de  Bloch,  the  Jew,  who 
has  with  great  skill  shown  the  economic 
futility  of  subjecting  national  disputes  to 

76 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


the  adjudication  of  gunpowder.  It  is  Felix 
Adler  and  Jacob  Schiff  who  have  punctured 
the  sophistries  of  force  often  more  effectively 
than  priests  and  bishops.  The  socialists  on 
Boston  Common — whose  social  philosophy, 
if  they  have  any,  I  reject — are  sometimes  dis¬ 
playing  more  sympathy  with  the  dreams  of 
primitive  Christianity  than  are  we  who  have 
learned  by  skillful  exegesis  to  explain  those 
dreams  away.  In  some  of  the  so-called  “rad¬ 
ical”  publications  we  often  find  more  con¬ 
vinced  advocacy  of  international  concord 
and  organization  than  in  the  average  “reli¬ 
gious”  weekly.  Here  is  the  challenging 
paradox — that  the  chief  opponents  of  war 
in  the  last  two  hundred  years  have  been  men 
having  no  visible  alliance  with  the  creeds  or 
the  institutions  of  the  Christian  religion. 

Of  course  there  are  exceptions  to  any  such 
general  statement.  Tolstoy  has  disturbed 
the  world  precisely  because  of  his  union  of 
pacifism  and  Christianity.  Wicklif  and 
George  Fox  so  far  returned  to  the  primitive 
faith  that  they  condemned  all  appeal  to  force 
as  unchristian.  Whittier  gave  the  Christian 
faith  a  pacific  interpretation,  as  the  Quakers 

77 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


have  always  done.  Dr.  Channing  pleaded 
with  far-reaching  voice  for  the  rejection  of 
the  philosophy  of  force  as  the  basis  of  human 
society.  It  is  also  true  that  some  men — for 
example,  Friedrich  Nietzsche — have  rejected 
both  Christianity  and  world-peace,  and  for 
the  same  reason.  But  in  spite  of  conspicuous 
exceptions  it  remains  true  that  the  strongest 
pleas  for  law  in  place  of  war  have  come  from 
thinkers  who  profess  little  sympathy  with 
historic  Christianity.  Richard  Cobden,  whose 
motive  power  was  humanitarian  rather  than 
religious,  was  ever  pleading  for  the  peaceful 
expansions  of  commerce,  while  Mazzini,  fired 
with  deep  religious  faith,  urged  every  nation 
to  stand  with  its  total  military  force  for  the 
rights  of  the  weak  and  defenseless  through¬ 
out  the  world.  Wordsworth,  Carlyle,  and 
Ruskin  have  all  agreed  with  John  Milton  in 
finding  room  in  Christianity  for  the  calling 
and  virtues  of  the  soldier.  The  leaders  of  the 
Church  of  England  to-day  have  no  question 
as  to  the  rightness  of  some  wars.  But  the 
two  most  eminent  opponents  of  war  now  liv¬ 
ing  in  England,  John  Morley  and  Bertrand 
Russell,  stand  voluntarily  aloof  from  organ- 

78 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


ized  religion.  What  are  the  reasons  of  this 
disappointing  alignment? 

One  reason  is  obvious.  If  war  is  in  es¬ 
sence  irrational,  then  the  rationalists  should 
be  everywhere  arrayed  against  it.  We  use 
the  word  “rationalist”  in  no  invidious  sense. 
It  is  a  term  of  description  only.  By  a  ration¬ 
alist  we  mean  one  who  regards  the  world  as 
entirely  explicable  through  the  ordinary 
reasoning  processes,  and  therefore  has  no 
use  for  the  mystical,  the  subconscious,  the 
supernatural.  We  do  not  mean  to  describe 
a  set  of  beliefs  or  unbeliefs,  but  an  intellec¬ 
tual  tone  and  temper.  Thus  W.  E.  H. 
Lecky  speaks  of  “the  spirit  of  rationalism; 
by  which  I  understand  not  any  class  of  de¬ 
finite  opinions  or  criticisms,  but  rather  a  cer¬ 
tain  cast  of  thought,  or  bias  of  reasoning, 
which  has  during  the  last  three  centuries 
gained  a  marked  ascendency  in  Europe.” 
And  in  the  same  connection  he  says,  “To 
those  who  would  investigate  the  causes  of  ex¬ 
isting  opinions,  the  study  of  predispositions 
is  much  more  important  than  the  study  of 
arguments.”1 

1  Rationalism  in  Europe,  pp.  14,  16. 

79 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


The  rationalistic  temper  is,  of  course,  re¬ 
volted  by  the  ever-recurring  spectacle  of 
nations  at  war,  because  war  itself  is  a  species 
of  insanity,  an  abdication  of  reason.  The 
cast  of  mind  which  habitually  relies  on  rea¬ 
son  as  the  sole  organ  of  truth  and  the  sole 
arbiter  of  duty  is  affronted  and  outraged  by 
war,  which  confessedly  seeks  not  truth  but 
power,  and  makes  it  one’s  supreme  duty  “not 
to  reason  why.”  War  cannot  determine 
which  of  two  nations  is  right  in  a  dispute 
over  a  boundary  line.  It  can  only  determine 
which  is  the  stronger — as  when  two  farmers 
seek  to  determine  where  a  fence  should  run 
by  arming  themselves  with  pitchforks.  The 
contest  may  prove  decisively  which  farmer 
has  the  stronger  arm  or  the  longer  fork — it 
certainly  cannot  prove  where  the  fence  ought 
to  run.  It  proves  merely  what  is,  and  has  no 
decisive  value  in  determining  what  ought 
to  be. 

Thermopylae  certainly  showed  that  the 

Persian  army  was  stronger  than  the  Greek ; 

it  could  not  show  that  Persia  was  in  the  right. 

It  was  not  the  right  which  triumphed  when 

England  attacked  and  defeated  the  Danish 

80 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


fleet  off  Copenhagen  in  1807.  It  was  not 
the  right  which  triumphed  when  the  Ger¬ 
mans  captured  the  French  army  at  Sedan. 
We  believe  that  the  right  did  triumph  at 
Yorktown  and  at  Appomattox.  But  is  it 
not  probable  that  war  has  settled  things 
wrong  quite  as  often  as  it  has  settled  them 
right  ?  And  when  a  dispute  is  settled  wrong, 
is  it  settled  at  all  ? 

It  is  this  essential  irrationality  of  proced¬ 
ure  which  repels  the  rationalist  and  deprives 
him  of  all  possible  sympathy.  He  cannot 
admit  any  slightest  good  in  a  method  which 
is  confessedly  the  acme  of  unreason.  He 
sees  in  it  a  mere  reversion  to  brute  force,  a 
terrified  desertion  of  all  that  distinguishes 
men  from  animals,  a  final  plunge  into  dark¬ 
ness  and  despair.  Animals  habitually  live  in 
fear  of  one  another,  and  to  blind  fear  the 
only  reply  is  blind  force.  When  two  nations 
give  up  all  trust  in  treaties,  all  confidence  in 
diplomacy,  all  hope  of  persuasion  by  reason, 
all  appeal  to  international  law,  and  simply 
betake  themselves  to  bayonet  and  howitzer, 
they  fall  to  the  animal  plane — or,  rather,  far 

below  it,  for  they  demonstrate  a  capacity  for 

81 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


cruelties  no  animal  ever  practiced  and  a 
bestiality  below  that  of  any  beast.  The 
mystic  may  see  in  war  the  play  of  super¬ 
natural  forces ;  the  man  in  whom  great  affec¬ 
tions  and  loyalties  are  dominant  may  admire 
its  splendid  devotion.  But  the  man  of  criti¬ 
cal  temper,  trained  from  his  youth  to  ask, 
“Cui  bonoV’  sees  in  most  of  the  wars  of  his¬ 
tory  but  a  witches’  dance  of  unreason  and  the 
supreme  evidence  of  human  folly. 

In  our  time  there  has  been  a  remarkable 
attempt  to  meet  this  objection  by  inventing 
and  expounding  a  philosophical  defense  of 
war.  That  defense,  as  set  forth  by  Nietzsche 
and  Treitschke  and  Cramb  and  Mahan,  is 
that,  while  war  may  be  a  blundering  method 
of  settling  a  boundary  line,  it  is  a  legitimate 
and  reasonable  method  of  deciding  which  of 
the  contestants  has  the  more  fully  developed 
personality,  and  so  which  of  the  two  is  the 
worthier  to  acquire  possession  and  domina¬ 
tion.  Right  living  certainly  produces  might 
— so  runs  the  argument.  If,  then,  a  nation 
becomes  mighty,  it  thereby  demonstrates  its 
essential  rightness  of  life.  Let  it  then  raise 

its  banner,  challenge  its  weaker  neighbor  to 

82 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


the  ordeal  of  battle,  assured  that  its  triumph 
in  war  will  be  a  vindication  of  its  moral 
worth.  Since  right  produces  might,  might 
is  the  final  test  of  right.  In  all  history — thus 
the  defense  argues — the  worthiest  nations 
have  become  the  strongest.  By  obedience  to 
laws — the  laws  of  nature  and  of  man — by 
discipline  and  virtue  and  industry,  by  science 
and  organization  and  cooperative  labor,  a 
nation  accumulates  power.  Then  it  may  wel¬ 
come  the  test  of  battle.  “To  arms,  ye  brave !” 
The  verdict  of  war  will  be  the  verdict  of  his¬ 
tory  and  the  judgment  of  God.  The  vic¬ 
torious  nation  will  have  demonstrated  its  self- 
discipline,  its  inherent  virtue,  its  moral  value, 
its  right  to  dominate  a  larger  section  of  the 
world.  This  argument,  wrought  out  in  a 
voluminous  literature,  is  the  modern  defense 
of  war.  Is  it  valid? 

From  the  standpoint  of  mere  logic  the  ar¬ 
gument  has  no  value  whatever.  Right  does 
indeed  involve  might;  but  it  does  not  follow 
that  might  involves  right.  It  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  health  produces  wealth.  But  can 
we  reverse  the  statement  and  say  that  wealth 

is  the  test  of  health,  and  that  wherever  we 

83 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


find  a  wealthy  man  we  are  sure  he  has  lived 
a  healthy  life?  If  might  is  the  infallible  test 
of  right  living,  then  Mr.  John  L.  Sullivan 
must  have  been  a  paragon  of  virtue.  If 
physical  strength  is  the  proof  of  moral  value, 
the  pugilist  and  the  longshoreman  are  indeed 
the  saints  of  the  earth,  and  the  frail  Mrs. 
Browning  and  the  delicate,  sensitive  Keats 
are  indeed  convicted  of  high  crimes  and  mis¬ 
demeanors.  In  the  poem  where  William 
Blake  describes  the  fascination  of  “tiger, 
tiger,  burning  bright,”  in  the  forest,  he  asks, 
“Did  he  who  made  the  lamb  make  thee?” 
Certainly,  the  world  has  room  enough  for 
both  tigers  and  lambs,  for  the  strong  and  the 
weak  which  together  make  up  the  magnifi¬ 
cent  variety  of  the  parti-colored  and  mani¬ 
folded  creation.  But  is  the  tiger’s  supe¬ 
riority  of  thigh  and  claw  a  proof  of  superior 
social  or  moral  value  and  his  right  to  dom¬ 
inate  forest  and  pasture?  So  the  tiger 
thinks.  So  all  creatures  think  before  the 
dawn  of  reason  and  the  arrival  of  conscience. 
For  men  to  think  so  and  reason  so  is  to 
descend  to  the  life  and  the  law  of  the  jungle. 

But  let  us  approach  this  famous — or  in- 

84 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


famous — modern  defense  of  war  from  an¬ 
other  angle.  We  must  define  our  terms. 
“Right  produces  might” — yes,  but  what  sort 
of  might?  Do  we  mean  physical,  or  mental, 
or  social,  or  spiritual  might?  What  sort  of 
might  did  right  living  produce  in  Francis  of 
Assisi  ?  It  gave  him  neither  strength  of  body 
nor  power  of  purse,  nor  support  of  govern¬ 
ment,  much  less  the  help  of  an  army  or  navy. 
It  stripped  him  of  all  earthly  possessions,  and 
gave  him,  naked,  poor,  despised,  a  moral  in¬ 
fluence  still  potent  throughout  the  world. 
What  sort  of  might  was  developed  in  John 
Wesley  by  his  strict  “Methodist”  living  at 
Oxford  and  for  long  years  after?  He  told 
the  taxgatherers  he  had  “two  silver  tea¬ 
spoons  in  London  and  two  in  Bristol,”  and 
could  not  recall  anything  else  in  his  posses¬ 
sion  that  was  taxable.  Yet  his  invisible 
power  to  reform  and  remold  England  was 
greater  than  that  of  any  member  of  Parlia¬ 
ment  or  any  Cabinet  officer  in  his  day. 

So  it  is  with  nations.  The  physically 
weakest  have  often,  perhaps  usually,  been 
the  most  influential  in  the  realm  of  ideals  and 

so  have  shaped  the  history  of  humanity. 

85 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


Phoenicia  was  mightier  than  Greece,  but  left 
no  trace  behind  her,  because  her  might  was 
physical  and  commercial.  The  city  of  Tyre, 
famous  for  her  ships  that  bore  the  traffic  of 
the  world,  was  far  less  influential  than 
Bethlehem,  “little  among  the  thousands  of 
Israel.”  Right  produces  many  kinds  of 
power,  and  to  identify  right  with  one  kind 
only,  with  military  and  naval  power,  is  to 
belittle  it  beyond  measure,  and  to  shut  our 
eyes  to  the  great  realities  of  history.  Napo¬ 
leon  was  anticipating  the  modern  argument 
when  he  said:  “God  is  on  the  side  of  the 
strongest  battalions” — a  crude  and  cynical 
test  of  divine  approval.  It  is  unquestionably 
true  that  the  realized  presence  of  God  makes 
battalions  strong.  But  we  cannot  reverse 
the  statement  and  say  that  strong  battalions 
prove  the  divine  presence,  since  strength 
may  come  from  below  as  well  as  from  above, 
and  Milton’s  Satan  had  immortal  courage 
“never  to  submit  or  yield.” 

The  trouble  with  this  argument  is  that  it 

would  draw  conclusions  from  a  single  local 

event  when  we  need  an  induction  as  wide  as 

the  world  and  as  long  as  time.  A  man  can- 

86 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


not  tell  whether  the  tide  is  rising  by  watch¬ 
ing  one  wave  that  breaks  defeated  on  a  sandy 
beach.  We  cannot  judge  which  of  two  men 
is  in  the  right  by  the  outcome  of  a  duel,  or 
which  of  two  nations  is  of  more  value  by 
awaiting  the  result  of  an  international  duel. 
Watching  history  the  centuries  through  and 
the  world  over,  we  may  begin  to  find  a  basis 
for  some  conclusion.  A  universal  conflict 
involving  the  entire  world  throughout  its 
whole  history  would  indeed  give  an  adequate 
and  final  test.  In  that  sense  the  “history  of 
the  world  is  the  judgment  of  the  world.”  An 
induction  drawn  from  many  centuries  of  hu¬ 
man  struggle  must  have  some  validity.  We 
are  sure  that  if  Mohammedanism  showed 
itself  stronger  than  eastern  Christianity  for 
seven  hundred  years,  there  must  have  been  a 
moral  vitality  in  the  followers  of  the  prophet 
that  was  lacking  in  the  decayed  and  super¬ 
stitious  churches  of  the  Orient.  We  are  con¬ 
fident  that  if  right  and  might  are  parallel 
lines  they  will  meet  at  infinity.  But  there  is 
no  one  point  in  all  the  world’s  unfolding 
story  where  we  can  be  sure  that  they  will 
coincide  and  that  physical  superiority  will  be 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


the  evidence  of  moral  worth.  In  a  thousand 
cases  the  contrary  has  been,  and  will  be,  true. 
Ultimately,  indeed,  the  right  must  win  on 
the  world’s  vast  arena;  to  divorce  right  and 
might  forever  is  the  deepest  pessimism.  W e 
cannot  for  a  moment  believe  in  “truth  for¬ 
ever  on  the  scaffold,  wrong  forever  on  the 
throne.”  To  believe  that  right  is  to  be  finally 
defeated  is  to  lose  all  interest  in  doing  right. 
Rut  the  right  has  stood  on  a  thousand  scaf¬ 
folds,  and  the  wrong  may  yet  sit  on  a  thou¬ 
sand  thrones.  To  say  that  whatever  climbs 
the  throne  is  thereby  proved  to  be  right  is  to 
turn  all  history  upside  down,  is  to  make 
Calvin  right  and  Servetus  wrong,  to  give  to 
Pilate  the  governor  a  nobler  character  than 
to  his  victim,  Jesus. 

But  there  is  a  second  reason  for  the  al¬ 
most  universal  protest  of  rationalism  against 
war ;  and  that  is  the  naive  faith  of  the  ration¬ 
alists  in  the  integrity  and  purity  of  human 
nature.  To  them  the  human  being  is  a  sim¬ 
ple,  reasonable  compound — if  not  a  chemi¬ 
cal  mixture,  at  least  a  purely  organic  growth 
under  chemical  and  biological  laws.  They 

see,  of  course,  the  tragedy  of  the  world  and 

88 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 

feel  it  keenly,  but  believing  as  they  do  in  the 
rationality  of  the  world  process,  they  must 
believe  in  the  rationality  of  each  human  be¬ 
ing  who  is  the  product  of  that  process. 
Human  nature  has  indeed  its  dark  sections, 
as  a  checkerboard  has  its  dark  squares;  but 
to  them  it  is  black  spotted  on  a  fundamental 
white,  not  white  spotted  on  black.  Their 
“cast  of  thought”  will  not  permit  the  drama 
of  life  to  turn  out  a  tragedy.  They  are  fully 
persuaded  that  history  is  an  orderly  process 
of  evolution  under  law,  and  each  human  be¬ 
ing  is  an  orderly  section  in  the  orderly 
process.  Why  disturb  the  fundamental  har¬ 
monies  of  life  by  talk  about  sin,  about  the 
problem  of  evil,  about  Dantesquian  visions 
of  the  purgation  of  the  soul  through  pain? 
Man  is  in  essential  harmony  with  the  envi¬ 
ronment  from  which  he  sprang;  hence  the 
tragedy  of  life  is  more  apparent  than  real, 
and  the  evil  of  which  the  theologians  talk  is 
merely  the  shadow  of  goodness,  is  “silence 
implying  sound.”  When  Henry  D.  Thoreau 
was  dying  a  friend  said  to  him:  “Henry, 
have  you  made  your  peace  with  God?”  To 

which  Thoreau  answered  with  charming — 

89 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


or  appalling — naivete:  “John,  I  didn’t  know 
God  and  myself  had  quarreled.”  To  ra¬ 
tionalism  there  is  no  quarrel  between  the 
universe  and  any  creature  in  it;  why,  then, 
should  there  be  anywhere  a  battlefield?  Evil 
is  on  its  way  to  inevitable  goodness;  why 
fight  to  bring  about  the  inevitable?  Since 
the  checkerboard  is  fundamentally  white, 
why  scrub  so  fiercely  to  remove  the  black 
squares,  which,  after  all,  do  give  variety  to 
the  board  and  furnish  opportunity  for  an 
interesting  game?  “Why  so  hot,  my  little 
man?” 

An  interesting  contrast  might  be  drawn 
between  the  world-view  of  such  religious 
leaders  as  Pusey  and  Keble  in  England  and 
that  of  their  American  contemporaries, 
Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker.  Pusey 
wrote  to  Keble  as  a  penitent  to  a  father  con¬ 
fessor,  speaking  of  himself  as  “scarred  all 
over  and  seamed  with  sin,”  “a  monster”  in 
his  own  eyes,  “covered  with  leprosy  from 
head  to  foot.”  He  was  ready  for  expiation 
by  vigil,  by  fasting,  by  incarceration,  by  any 
means  which  could  lift  the  burden  of  guilt 

from  his  soul.  Rut  about  the  same  time,  the 

90 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


New  England  Transcendentalists  were  ex¬ 
alting  humanity  to  the  nth  power.  “Never 
wrong  people  with  your  contritions  or  with 
dismal  views  of  society,”  wrote  Emerson,  in 
serene  detachment  from  both  society  and 
contrition.  More  polemically  Theodore 
Parker  wrote:  “I  think  that  the  thing  which 
ministers  mean  by  sin  (commonly  pro¬ 
nounced  ngsin-n-n-n)  has  no  more  existence 
than  phlogiston,  which  was  once  adopted  to 
explain  combustion.  I  find  sins,  i.  e.,  con¬ 
scious  violations  of  natural  right,  but  no  sin, 
i.  e.,  no  conscious  and  intentional  preference 
of  wrong  as  such  to  right  as  such ;  no  condi¬ 
tion  of  enmity  against  God.” 

After  quoting  a  writer  of  somewhat  simi¬ 
lar  views,  William  James  says:  “If  we  are  in 
search  of  a  broken  and  a  contrite  heart, 
clearly  we  need  not  look  to  this  brother.  His 
contentment  with  the  finite  incases  him  like  a 
lobster-shell  and  shields  him  from  all  morbid 
repining  at  his  distance  from  the  Infinite.” 
Such  “healthy-mindedness,”  of  course,  sees 
in  human  nature  no  dark  valleys,  no  fright¬ 
ful  abysses,  no  volcanic  terrors,  only  formal 

Italian  gardens  where  the  wildness  of  nature 

91 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

has  been  subdued  to  geometrical  patterns 
and  nurse-maids  and  children  need  fear  no 
evil.  Such  rationalism  would  treat  the 
tragedy  of  sin  with  a  sort  of  “mind-cure” 
philosophy,  by  denying  the  essential  exist¬ 
ence  of  the  evil  in  man.  It  definitely  rejects 
the  conception — to  quote  again  from  Wil¬ 
liam  James — of  “there  being  elements  in  the 
universe  which  make  no  rational  whole  in 
conjunction  with  the  other  elements,  .  .  . 

so  much  dirt,  as  it  were,  and  matter  out  of 
place.”  For  them  the  real  is  the  rational, 
and  the  rational  is  the  only  real.  The  whole 
expanse  of  human  life  is  divided  up  into  neat 
house-lots  and  fenced  in  by  their  logic.  There 
are  no  longer  any  dark  forests  visible,  no 
boulders,  no  wild  flowers,  nothing  wild,  but 
all  is  tame,  correct,  tagged  and  labeled  and 
deadly  dull.  Such  untamable  things  as  “in¬ 
stinct,”  “telepathy,”  “the  subconscious,”  “the 
subliminal  self,”  as  well  as  the  older  concep¬ 
tions  of  sin  and  penalty,  are  rejected  in-' 
stantly,  as  too  unscientific  for  admission  into 
the  ordered  thought-paddock  of  the  ration¬ 
alist  philosophy.  It  looks  upon  Professor 
Huxley  as  guilty  almost  of  lese-majeste 

92 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 

when  he  speaks  of  the  “infinite  wickedness” 
of  humanity,  and  it  prefers  the  easy  expla¬ 
nation  of  Mr.  Buckle,  who  found  the  cause 
of  all  human  character  in  climate,  coast  lines, 
mountains  and  rivers,  soil  and  food. 

Here  we  reach  the  deepest  reason  for  the 
pacifism  of  the  rationalists.  They  stand  op¬ 
posed  to  war  for  precisely  the  same  reason 
that  they  stand  aloof  from  historical  Chris¬ 
tianity,  because  in  both  religion  and  war 
there  is  an  appeal  to  transcendental  interests 
and  supernatural  powers.  Professor  Fisher, 
of  Princeton  University,  puts  the  case  none 
too  strongly  when  he  says:  “Rationalism 
strikes  at  war  by  striking  at  the  conception 
of  faith,  duty,  and  loyalty  to  larger  social 
wholes.  .  .  .  The  sensualistic  ideal  of 

rationalism,  in  so  far  as  it  succeeds  in  realiz¬ 
ing  itself,  may  cast  out  war  between  states; 
but  it  puts  in  place  of  it  social  death  and  dis¬ 
solution,  perhaps  civil  strife  within  states.  It 
may  destroy  war  between  states,  and  a  great 
deal  more  besides;  but  it  can  construct  no 
vital  unity  of  mankind;  it  can  generate  no 
real  principle  of  social  life  and  organism.”1 


1  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  October,  1917,  p.  106. 

93 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


Both  war  and  religion  summon  men  to  rise 
above  conventional  standards  and  habitual 
calculations  and  stake  all  they  have  and  are 
in  defense  of  intangible  values  and  ideal 
ends.  The  men  who  go  to  war  are  indeed  led 
by  mixed  motives,  as  are  all  men  who  go 
anywhere.  But  their  action  is  not  to  be  ex¬ 
plained  by  hunger  for  bread  or  gold  or  land. 
The  economic  motive  they  profess  to  scorn, 
and  their  profession  of  higher  aims  is  often 
justified,  even  though  the  means  which  they 
use  may  be  often  evil.  They  have  not  rea¬ 
soned  out  their  action  and  based  it  on  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number. 
Deeper  than  any  reasons  they  can  give  is  the 
profound  inner  revolt  against  injustice, 
tyranny,  slavery,  and  the  inner  urge  which 
drives  them  on  is  not  explicable  merely  in 
terms  of  geography  or  iron-mines  or  wheat- 
fields.  A  tax  on  tea  in  177 5  was  surely  a  very 
small  matter ;  thousands  of  Americans 
thought  it  too  small  to  fight  over.  But  behind 
that  tax  was  an  immortal  principle — no  taxa¬ 
tion  without  representation,  or,  as  we  now 
more  broadly  state  it,  no  just  government 
without  the  consent  of  the  governed.  There 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


we  have  an  intangible  ideal,  a  sense  of  tran¬ 
scendental  values,  a  challenge  to  existing  in¬ 
stitutions,  that  has  called  millions  in  recent 
centuries  to  seal  their  faith  with  their  blood. 

The  men  who  “fired  the  shot  heard  round 
the  world”  at  Lexington  would  have  been 
far  richer  in  earthly  goods,  with  more  pros¬ 
perous  homes  and  busier  towns  and  cities,  if 
they  had  quietly  submitted  to  the  petty  exac¬ 
tions  of  the  crown  three  thousand  miles 
away.  But  to  them  poverty  with  freedom 
was  dearer  than  all  possible  wealth  with 
diminished  freedom  and  loss  of  all  possibility 
of  self-respect.  On  the  principle  of  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number, 
the  American  Tories  had  an  excellent  argu¬ 
ment.  On  the  principle  of  “certain  inalien¬ 
able  rights”  the  Tories  were  wrong  and  the 
heart  of  the  colonies  was  sound.  Every  great 
defensive  war  has  seen  a  people  turning  its 
back  on  the  old  ordered  life  of  the  trim 
Italian  garden,  and  plunging  out  into  dark¬ 
ness  and  chaos,  assured  that  only  so  could  it 
preserve  liberty  on  earth.  Liberty  cannot 
be  weighed  in  scales ;  it  cannot  be  gotten  for 
silver,  for  man  knoweth  not  the  price  thereof. 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


It  is  one  of  the  imponderables  and  intan¬ 
gibles.  It  has  been  abused;  in  its  name  a 
thousand  crimes  are  committed;  many  men 
believe  it  is  a  menace  and  fear  its  growth. 
Yet  for  this  imponderable  visionary  ideal 
men  act  in  a  way  which  defies  all  considera¬ 
tions  of  profit  and  loss  and  drives  the  utili¬ 
tarians  to  despair.  Perhaps  John  Davidson 
was  quite  right  when  he  uttered  his  dislike  of 
the  title  of  a  certain  book,  “The  Rise  of 
Rationalism  in  Europe,”  and  said:  “There 
never  was  a  rise  of  rationalism;  there  was 
only  decay  of  imagination.” 

Deeply  are  the  roots  of  patriotism  and  re¬ 
ligion  intertwined.  “If  I  forget  thee,  O 
Jerusalem,”  was  the  cry  of  one  who  was  both 
temple-singer  and  ardent  nationalist.  The 
great  national  anthems  usually  blend  both 
points  of  view.  We  begin  by  singing  “My 
country,  ’tis  of  thee,”  and  we  end  by  singing: 
“Our  fathers’  God,  to  thee.”  In  such  apos¬ 
trophe  there  is  a  joyous  emergence  from  the 
local  and  the  individual,  and  a  projection  of 
the  little  self  into  a  mighty  and  invisible 
whole.  That  release  from  selfishness,  that 

outflow  of  the  single  personality  into  the 

96 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 

nation,  the  kingdom,  into  the  life  of  hu¬ 
manity  and  the  life  of  God,  is  the  essence  of 
both  patriotism  and  religion.  Inexplicable 
it  is  to  the  formulas  of  Bentham  and  Buckle, 
but  easily  understood  by  the  man  who  has 
once  yielded  his  soul  to  its  sway.  Schiller 
entered  into  the  daily  experience  of  millions 
in  church  and  state  when  he  counseled : 

“Be  thou  a  whole,  or  if  thou  canst  not  bear  that  part, 
Be  part  of  a  whole  and  serve  it  with  a  faithful  heart.” 

We  now  see  the  immense  distance  which 
separates  the  pacifism  of  the  rationalists 
from  the  pacifism  of  Christianity.  Both 
modes  of  thought  seek  after  world-peace. 
The  rationalist  and  the  Christian  together 
oppose  war  as  one  of  the  greatest  earthly 
evils.  They  are  both  pledged  to  its  ultimate 
abolition.  But  the  one  opposes  war  as  irra¬ 
tional,  as  a  mistaken  move  in  the  game;  the 
other  opposes  it  as  cruel  and  hideous,  an  out¬ 
rage  on  humanity,  an  affront  to  God.  The 
one  would  suppress  war  by  suppressing  the 
passionate  loyalties  and  devotions  out  of 
which  war  springs;  the  other  by  deepening 
and  broadening  those  devotions  and  enthu- 

97 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


siasms  until  they  include  all  humanity  and 
flow  around  not  a  single  local  government, 
but  a  true  Parliament  of  Man.  Rationalism 
would  bring  world  unity  by  effective  reason¬ 
ing;  Christianity  by  the  establishment  of 
good  will  among  men.  One  enlarges  on  self- 
interest  as  indicating  the  path  to  peace,  on 
the  economic  damage  and  futility  of  slaying 
one’s  own  customers  and  destroying  one’s 
own  markets;  the  other  insists  on  the  moral 
disaster  involved  in  reducing  God’s  crown¬ 
ing  handiwork  to  cannon-fodder  and  in¬ 
flaming  a  whole  nation  to  hymns  of  hate. 

So  far  as  rationalism  takes  a  materialistic 
tinge,  it  is  foredoomed  to  the  failure  which 
attends  all  shallow  thinking.  The  millen¬ 
nium  it  paints  is  not  the  state  for  which  a 
weary  world  is  longing.  Its  heavenly  city 
turns  out  to  be  a  sort  of  glorified  town  of 
Pullman,  where  common  sense  has  laid  out 
all  the  streets  and  built  every  house,  with 
little  aid  from  imagination  or  loyalty  or  un¬ 
calculating  devotion  to  human  ideals.  But 
in  the  City  of  God,  as  seen  from  Patmos, 
the  height  is  equal  to  the  length  and  the 

breadth — the  city  soars  as  well  as  spreads. 

98 


PACIFISM  OF  RATIONALISTS 


Those  who  enter  that  city  are  done  with 
battle,  in  the  old  sense  of  fighting  for  terri¬ 
tory  or  glory  or  gold.  But  we  read:  “There 
was  war  in  heaven,”  that  is,  the  passion  for 
an  ideal,  the  willingness  to  fling  away  life 
for  intangibles  and  invisibles,  the  joy  of  end¬ 
less  combat  in  behalf  of  truth  and  right,  that 
shall  go  on  forever,  since  eternal  struggle  is 
the  essence  of  eternal  peace. 

Christianity  cannot  permanently  tolerate 

war,  any  more  than  it  can  tolerate  famine  or 

pestilence  or  desolating  power.  But  it  fears 

the  de-natured  millennium  of  the  rationalist 

almost  as  much  as  it  fears  the  blood  and  iron 

of  the  imperialist.  It  cannot  make  alliance 

with  Herbert  Spencer  in  order  to  escape 

from  Bismarck.  It  cannot  be  contented  with 

a  future  of  full  dinner  pails  and  sanitary 

tenements,  and  “deduce  the  laws  of  conduct 

from  the  laws  of  comfort.”  It  appeals  to  the 

totality  of  human  nature,  to  its  fears  and 

hopes,  its  ideals  and  loyalties,  its  passion  for 

the  ultimate  surrender,  and  its  faith  in  God. 

It  counts  the  surrender  of  property  and  life 

as  nothing  compared  with  the  betrayal  of  a 

trust,  and  in  defense  of  weak  peoples  it  flings 

99 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


its  total  resources  into  the  struggle.  It 
would  be  moral  suicide  for  a  Christian  na¬ 
tion  to  acquiesce  in  the  schemes  of  another 
nation  which  through  fifty  years  of  mis-edu- 
cation  teaches  its  people  to  demand  “world- 
power  or  down-fall.”  To  that  demand  there 
is  but  one  answer:  “Down-fall  it  shall  be!” 
To  the  rationalist  war  may  be  the  worst  of 
evils,  since  it  interrupts  all  the  normal  course 
of  human  life.  To  the  Christian  there  is  one 
thing  worse — the  failure  to  resist  evil,  the 
compromise  *  with  unrighteousness  for  the 
sake  of  quiet  days,  and  the  unwillingness  to 
die  that  truth  may  live.  The  mighty  sum¬ 
mons  of  the  Christian  faith  is  not  merely  to 
“lay  down  your  arms”  and  plant  corn,  but  to 
“take  the  whole  armor  of  God”  in  a  spiritual 
and  eternal  campaign.  It  aims  to  create  not 
a  nation  of  prosperous  farmers  or  shop¬ 
keepers,  but  an  enlistment  of  all  human  be¬ 
ings  as  soldiers  of  the  common  good.  Its 
goal  is  not  the  paradise  of  industrialism  but 
the  City  of  God. 


100 


It  is  the  old  struggle  between  the  two  principles 
— right  and  wrong  throughout  the  world.  They  are 
the  two  principles  that  have  stood  face  to  face 
from  the  beginning  of  time,  and  will  continue  to 
struggle  long  after  Judge  Douglass  and  I  shall 
have  gone  to  our  graves. 

— Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  right  is  more  precious  than  peace,  and  we 
shall  fight  for  the  things  we  have  always  carried 
nearest  our  hearts. 


— Woodrow  Wilson. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  MORAL  LEADERSHIP  OF 
THE  CHURCH 

Many  reproaches  have  been  cast  upon 
the  church  for  its  lack  of  leadership  in  time 
of  war,  and  many  have  been  deserved.  But 
we  are  in  danger  of  reviling  rather  than  un¬ 
derstanding,  and  may  “pour  out  the  baby 
with  the  bath.”  The  church  is  not  the  only 
institution  that  has  failed  in  the  world’s 
crisis  to  meet  the  world’s  need,  and  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  not  the  only  force  that  has  seemed 
baffled  and  pathetically  impotent. 

Science  with  its  clear,  white  light  has 
failed  to  illumine  the  international  darkness, 
and  its  amazing  resources  have  been  forced 
into  the  destruction  of  cities,  the  desolating 
of  orchards  and  gardens,  the  mutilation  of 
millions  of  human  bodies  and  the  snuffing 
out  of  lives  that  would  have  furnished  us  the 
prophets  and  statesmen  of  the  future.  Do 

we  therefore  cease  to  study  science? 

103 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


Socialism,  which  professed  to  rise  above 
all  provincial  hatreds,  has  failed  utterly,  and 
allied  itself  only  with  the  powers  that  be. 
Does  that  fact  render  Socialism  henceforth 
a  negligible  quantity?  Diplomacy  has  failed. 
Shall  it  therefore  be  abandoned  in  favor  of  a 
national  referendum  or  a  decision  by  news¬ 
paper  correspondents?  Solemn  treaties  have 
become  scraps  of  paper.  Shall  we  disdain 
henceforth  all  treaties?  Britain’s  great  navy 
proved  unable  to  protect  Britain  from  war. 
Shall  navies  therefore  be  treated  as  scrap- 
iron?  Democracy  in  Russia  has  been  daz¬ 
zled  and  blinded  by  freedom  and  has  shown 
itself  a  giant  stumbling  in  the  dark.  Shall 
we  therefore  surrender  our  previous  faith  in 
democracy? 

It  may  be  said  that  since  the  special  horror 
of  war  is  its  moral  tragedy,  its  orgy  of  hate 
and  greed  and  lying  and  lust  and  murder, 
the  church  as  the  moral  guide  and  instructor 
of  humanity  is  charged  with  a  responsibility 
such  as  attaches  to  no  other  organization  or 
movement.  That  is  true.  The  church  has 
been  presented  with  the  greatest  opportu¬ 
nity  that  has  come  to  it  since  the  N apoleonic 

.104 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


wars  and  no  thoughtful  man  takes  much 
satisfaction  in  either  the  general  attitude  or 
the  specific  achievements  of  our  religious  de¬ 
nominations  during  the  Great  War.  Why 
are  we  dissatisfied?  What  did  we  expect? 
What  may  we  rightly  expect  and  demand  of 
organized  Christianity  in  time  of  desperate 
national  emergency? 

The  attitude  of  aloofness  and  indifference 
wpuld  be  beyond  forgiveness.  A  church  that 
stands  utterly  aloof  from  a  nation  in  the 
throes  of  mortal  struggle  should  be  rejected 
by  the  nation  forever  after.  A  church  given 
over  to  quietism  and  other-worldliness  in 
time  of  national  danger,  a  church  that  has  no 
message  save  that  of  “rest  for  the  weary  on 
the  other  side  of  Jordan,”  is  a  wholly  super¬ 
fluous  affair,  and  the  best  reward  it  can  ex¬ 
pect  from  an  indignant  people  will  be  a  re¬ 
spectful  requiescat  in  pace .  Archimedes, 
busy  with  his  geometrical  figures  in  ancient 
Syracuse,  could  ignore  international  move¬ 
ments,  and  as  the  Roman  soldiers  burst  into 
his  room  could  only  cry,  “Don’t  spoil  my 
circles!”  Goethe,  aspiring  to  reproduce  the 

calm  of  Greek  life,  could  listen  unmoved  to 

105 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


the  thunder  of  the  cannon  at  the  battle  of 
Jena.  But  such  self-absorption  is  inhuman 
and  therefore  unchristian. 

Our  premillenarian  brethren  are  easily  led 
into  similar  indifference  to  the  human  strug¬ 
gle.  If  one  expects  that  to-morrow  the 
heavens  will  literally  be  rolled  together  as  a 
scroll,  he  cannot  feel  overwhelming  concern 
regarding  any  clouds  that  now  darken  the 
horizon.  What  matters  a  transient  tyranny, 
when  soon  there  is  to  be  a  universal  reign  of 
peace  with  its  material  throne  in  Jerusalem? 
Why  get  excited  over  problems  of  the  slums 
when  soon  we  are  to  walk  the  golden  streets 
within  jasper  walls?  Why  spend  our  life  in 
protest  against  what  must  vanish  anyway, 
and  why  organize  against  evils  which  shall 
speedily  be  put  to  flight  by  a  divine  coup 
d’etat?  If  we  have  discovered  in  certain  ob¬ 
scure  texts  the  time-table  of  the  universe,  we 
need  not  spend  our  days  in  the  building  of 
railways  or  the  transportation  of  supplies, 
but  may  simply  hold  ourselves  ready  to  get 
aboard  the  train.  This  is  the  logical,  and 
often  the  actual,  attitude  of  some  good  men. 

Thus  both  the  quietist  and  the  literalist  may 

106 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


come  together.  Both  may  sit  as  mere  spec¬ 
tators  of  a  struggle  which  is  the  battle  of  the 
Lord. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  mistake  equally 
tragic  for  the  church  to  adopt  an  ex  cathedra 
attitude  in  time  of  national  crisis,  and  pro¬ 
nounce  collective  and  official  judgment  on 
specific  measures  or  individual  leaders.  The 
“soap-box  orator”  is  absolutely  sure  of  the 
measure  immediately  to  be  taken  to  end  all 
wars,  but  the  Christian  pulpit  must  have 
wider  vision.  To  denounce  certain  leaders 
and  demand  their  retirement,  to  advocate 
one  treaty  and  oppose  another,  to  announce 
from  the  pulpit  the  latest  social  or  political 
or  international  nostrum,  is  not  only  to  di¬ 
vide  the  congregation  but  is  to  close  their 
minds  to  the  deeper  message  of  the  Christian 
faith.  “Master,  speak  to  my  brother  that  he 
divide  the  inheritance  with  me,”  cried  one  im¬ 
patient  hearer  when  Jesus  was  speaking, 
which,  being  translated,  means :  “Let  the  pul¬ 
pit  speak  to  us  about  the  justice  of  the  eight- 
hour  day,  the  righteousness  of  the  single  tax, 
the  necessity  of  military  conscription,  the  im¬ 
portance  of  a  change  in  the  President’s  Cabi- 

107 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


net,  or  the  fatuous  policy  of  the  Russians.’’ 
But  the  reply  of  Jesus  is  not  yet  out  of  date: 
“Man,  who  made  me  a  judge  or  a  divider 
over  you?”  If  Jesus  of  Nazareth  felt  no  call 
to  render  decision  in  a  local  quarrel,  may  not 
his  modern  messengers  hesitate  to  deliver 
opinions  on  leaders  and  measures  that 
change  from  day  to  day?  Great  expert 
knowledge  and  long  training  could  perhaps 
justify  the  preacher  in  specific  announce¬ 
ments  on  pending  policies,  but  even  then  he 
would  be  devoting  his  strength  to  the 
machinery  of  government  rather  than  to  the 
unveiling  of  those  principles  which  lie  below 
all  government — that  mind  of  Christ  which 
must  yet  become  the  mind  of  humanity. 

In  no  passage  in  the  New  Testament  does 

the  mission  of  the  church  become  more 

luminous  than  in  that  declaration  of  Jesus 

regarding  his  own  mission  which  he  made  in 

the  synagogue  at  Nazareth.  He  had  grown 

to  be  thirty  years  of  age,  had  battled  with 

tremendous  inner  temptations  among  the 

crags  of  Judsea,  and  had  passed  through  the 

great  illumination  which  came  to  him  at  his 

baptism.  Then  returning  to  Nazareth  he 

108 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


was  called  on  in  the  synagogue  to  state  to  his 
fellow  townsmen  why  he  had  left  the  carpen¬ 
ter’s  shop  and  what  he  hoped  to^accomplish 
in  the  dangerous  calling  of  a  radical  prophet. 
He  found  a  fitting  statement  in  a  reinterpre¬ 
tation  of  Isaiah’s  message:  “The  spirit  of 
the  Lord  has  anointed  me  to” — do  what? 
The  silence  of  Jesus  is  as  eloquent  as  his 
purpose  is  positive.  Not  to  denounce  Herod, 
as  did  John  the  Baptist;  not  to  discuss  the 
justice  of  the  taxes  which  he  regularly  paid; 
not  to  approve  or  condemn  the  slaveholder, 
or  the  government  official,  or  the  soldier; 
but  to  go  to  the  root  of  human  life  by  enun¬ 
ciating  and  interpreting  certain  great  prin¬ 
ciples  or  objects  for  which  he  was  ready  to 
live  and  to  die.  Let  us  ponder  each  of  them: 
“to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  give  recovery 
of  sight  to  the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them 
that  are  bound.” 

The  healing  of  lacerated  spirits  is  univer¬ 
sally  recognized  as  peculiarly  the  function 
of  the  Christian  Church.  To  minister  to 
physical  necessities,  to  give  cups  of  cold 
water  or  of  coffee,  to  offer  medical  skill,  is 

clearly  a  noble  task.  But  even  the  Red 

109 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

Cross,  which  started  out  to  relieve  physical 
ills,  is  forced  to  go  beyond  them,  because  the 
physical  is  so  tangled  up  with  the  mental,  the 
social,  and  the  spiritual.  The  setting  of 
broken  bones  is  needed,  but  the  healing  of 
broken  hearts  is  still  more  imperative.  In 
time  of  war,  affections,  as  well  as  tissues,  are 
lacerated,  bright  dreams  are  shattered,  griefs 
are  imposed  for  life,  and  the  old  naive  trust 
in  the  divine  love  is  battered,  if  not  de¬ 
stroyed.  The  healing  of  the  world’s  heart 
is  more  needful  than  the  feeding  of  its 
stomach. 

There  is  very  little  of  conventional  com¬ 
fort  to  be  found  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
The  stoical  commonplaces  that  we  find  in 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  in  Benjamin  Franklin 
are  wanting  in  the  comfort  of  the  Nazarene. 
That  trouble  is  common  to  all,  that  we  must 
be  brave  for  the  sake  of  others,  that  we 
should  be  too  proud  to  weep — all  that  is 
quite  foreign  to  the  consolations  of  Jesus. 
The  musty  proverbs  which,  like  all  proverbs, 
merely  skim  the  surface  of  reality,  we  do  not 
find  in  his  teaching.  Our  modern  sayings 

that  “There  isn’t  more  cloud  than  sun,”  that 

no 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


we  “mustn’t  cry  over  spilt  milk,”  that  “It’s  a 
long  lane  that  has  no  turning,”  are  so  desti¬ 
tute  of  insight  that  they  affront  and  anger 
any  man  who  is  facing  a  real  grief.  And 
those  more  pious  platitudes,  which  remind 
us  that  the  Potter  has  power  over  the  clay, 
that  what  God  does  we  must  not  question — 
surely,  miserable  comforters  are  they  all. 
These  pretended  anodynes  were  never 
offered  by  Jesus  to  Mary  and  Martha  when 
their  brother  died,  nor  to  Jairus  when  he 
bewailed  his  little  daughter. 

The  prophet  Isaiah,  like  the  prophet  of 
Nazareth,  heard  the  cry,  “Comfort  ye,  com¬ 
fort  ye  my  people.”  How  was  he  to  do  it? 
“What  shall  I  cry?”  Not  the  platitudes  that 
we  find  in  all  the  pagan  literature ;  but  this : 
“Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord.”  It  was 
a  summons  to  let  God  into  the  present  life  of 
Israel.  The  only  real  comfort  is  the  revela¬ 
tion  of  truth.  The  broken-hearted  need 
chiefly  not  ancient  proverbs,  not  sympathetic 
phrases  and  tender  intonations,  not  official 
condolence,  but  actual  realization  of  the 
truth  that  God  is  in  his  world,  fighting  its 

battles,  shouldering  its  burdens,  suffering 

ill 


4 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

in  its  sorrows,  and  that  we  through  the  daily 
doing  of  the  prosaic  and  lonely  duty  may  be 
casting  up  a  highway  for  God’s  coming  into 
all  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Elisha,  con¬ 
fronted  by  a  youth  grieving  for  Elijah, 
spoke  no  word  of  customary  consolation.  He 
only  prayed,  “Open  the  young  man’s  eyes,” 
and  when  the  young  man  saw  the  spiritual 
hosts,  he  had  no  need  of  pious  speech.  To 
recognize  the  facts,  to  “see,  no  longer  blinded 
by  our  eyes,”  is  the  only  comfort  human 
hearts  need.  Unless  we  can  see  the  facts, 
heaven  itself  would  offer  no  consolation: 

“Yes,  we  may  pass  the  heavenly  screen, 

But  shall  we  know  that  we  are  there? — 

Who  know  not  what  these  dead  stones  mean, 
This  lovely  city  of  Lierre.” 

That  act  of  Elisha  leads  us  to  the  second 

element  in  the  moral  leadership  of  the 

church — the  recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind. 

In  war  time  our  moral  vision  is  blurred,  and 

we  “see  red”  or  do  not  see  at  all.  Under  the 

awful  stress  of  purely  physical  pressure, 

when  brutal  terror  threatens  those  we  love, 

when  all  the  deepest  passions  of  our  nature 

112 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


are  blown  to  white  heat,  clear  sight  becomes 
the  rarest  of  possessions  and  yet  remains  in¬ 
dispensable  to  moral  action.  The  nation  that 
is  fighting  for  its  life  strikes  out  blindly,  in 
the  frantic  necessity  of  striking  somehow 
and  somewhere.  “War  is  blows,”  says  a 
noted  Englishman,  when  urging  America  to 
cooperate.  Yes,  war  is  blows;  but  blows 
planted  in  the  right  place  and  at  the  right 
time  by  those  who  understand  the  moral  aim 
behind  the  physical  deed.  Loud-voiced  ora¬ 
tors  cry,  “Don’t  talk,  don’t  parley,  don’t 
think,  just  win  the  war,”  as  if  we  could 
strengthen  a  nation’s  hands  by  closing  its 
eyes.  Unless  there  be  some  sublime  moral 
aim  behind  a  defensive  war  the  church  must 
wash  its  hands  of  the  immoral  and  senseless 
struggle.  If  there  be  such  an  aim  that  can 
strengthen  our  hands  by  purifying  our  con¬ 
science  and  enlisting  the  power  of  Christian 
conviction,  then  the  primary  duty  of  the 
church  is  to  reveal  the  aim,  address  the  con¬ 
science,  and  show  us  that  resistance  to 
tyrants  is  obedience  to  God. 

Going  to  church  ought  to  be  entering 
the  Interpreter’s  House.  “I  went  into 

113 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

the  sanctuary  of  God,  then  understood  I,” 
was  the  experience  of  the  psalmist,  an  expe¬ 
rience  now  grown  rare  and  precious.  There 
is  something  almost  hopeless  about  the  aver¬ 
age  Sunday  morning  church  service  in  our 
large  cities.  The  congregation  ordinarily 
represents  the  successful  side  of  modern  life. 
At  the  head  of  each  pew  sits  a  man  who  has 
succeeded  under  the  present  social  and  moral 
order,  and  is  interested  in  preserving  it 
against  disturbing  influences.  He  is  sat¬ 
urated  with  preaching,  and  as  a  “tired  busi¬ 
ness  man”  can  hardly  be  expected  to  relish 
any  summons  to  rethink  the  propositions  on 
which  his  success  is  based.  In  the  pulpit  is  a 
man  whose  whole  environment  has  sheltered 
him  from  the  rougher  contacts  of  life.  He 
sees  his  congregation  only  in  its  best  attire. 
Men  dress  to  hear  him,  as  they  dress  for  the 
opera.  If  he  sees  them  during  the  week,  they 
hush  their  voices,  change  their  vocabulary, 
and  adopt  temporarily  his  point  of  view. 
Then  on  Sunday  the  sheltered  prophet  ad¬ 
dresses  the  men  who  want  to  be  sheltered 
from  disturbing  conceptions  and  to  have  elo¬ 
quent  reaffirmation  of  what  they  already  he¬ 
rn 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


lieve.  Can  such  a  church  be  an  Interpreter’s 
House? 

But  in  time  of  war  no  man  in  pew  or  pul¬ 
pit  can  protect  himself  from  what  John 
Morley  calls  the  “volcanic  elements”  in 
Christianity.  Men  come  to  church  already 
shaken  in  spirit,  “they  reel  to  and  fro  and 
stagger  like  a  drunken  man,  and  are  at 
their  wit’s  end.”  Their  moral  world  has 
suddenly  been  inverted.  The  Ten  Com¬ 
mandments  have  been  abrogated.  A  procla¬ 
mation  has  in  a  single  hour  created  a  hundred 
million  official  enemies,  and  to  plunder  and 
stab  and  kill  them  has  become  a  public  duty. 
A  man  leaves  wife  and  child  at  the  national 
summons  and  goes  forth  to  deprive  some 
other  wife  and  child  of  husband  and  father, 
and  to  keep  on  doing  it  until  the  ground  is 
sodden  with  blood  and  cities  are  a  charred 
ruin  and  millions  are  starving  and  driven  to 
surrender.  And  that  man’s  neighbors  and 
brothers  sit  in  the  church  on  Sunday  morn¬ 
ing,  all  their  vision  blurred  by  tears  and 
anger,  all  their  souls  in  insurrection,  all  their 
nature  crying  out  for  a  clue  to  the  moral 

maze.  They  have  closed  offices,  shops,  mills, 

115 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


and  homes  in  order  to  hear  the  Christian  mes¬ 
sage.  The  Christian  preacher  is  the  only 
man  in  civilization  for  whom  all  business 
ceases  in  order  that  his  message  may  be 
heard  and  pondered.  Before  him  sit  on  Sun¬ 
day  men  who  have  paused  in  the  vital  tasks 
of  modern  life  to  learn  what  is  worth  while 
and  what  is  the  goal  of  all  their  work.  They 
cannot  be  content  to  hear  how  men  were 
good  in  the  eighth  century  B.  C.  They  want 
to  know  what  is  goodness  now  in  the  present 
crisis,  what  Christ  would  do  if  he  were  here, 
what  his  teachings  mean  when  applied  to  the 
concrete  tragedy  in  which  they  are  involved. 
Is  the  man  in  the  pulpit  a  real  interpreter  of 
God?  Can  he  help  the  confused  and  storm- 
tossed  souls  before  him  to  see  the  ultimate 
realities  of  life  ? 

At  such  a  time  the  teaching  function  of 
the  church  looms  large  and  imperative.  Each 
morning  the  daily  newspaper  storms  our 
minds  with  new  facts,  and  each  night  we  are 
torn  by  conflicting  duties  and  apparently  in¬ 
soluble  problems.  This  sudden  abrogation 
of  the  Ten  Commandments — is  it  reconcil¬ 
able  with  ethics  and  religion?  After  years  of 

116 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 

learning  to  love  shall  we  now  begin  to  hate? 
Yet,  if  there  is  nothing  to  hate,  surely  there 
is  nothing  worth  fighting  against.  Can  we 
love  our  neighbor  while  we  throttle  him?  Is 
our  old  idea  of  love  too  narrow,  too  senti¬ 
mental,  too  unreal  to  meet  the  actual  situa¬ 
tion?  Is  patriotism  the  highest  duty  of  the 
Christian,  or  is  it  mere  clannishness  and 
selfishness,  as  when  Dr.  Johnson  pronounced 
it  “the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel”?  Is  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  applicable  only  to  indi¬ 
viduals  and  without  any  reference  to  the  re¬ 
lation  of  states  to  one  another?  Is  there  such 
a  thing  as  national  altruism,  and  may  a  state 
lay  down  its  life  for  great  ends  as  does  the 
single  martyr  or  crusader?  Is  the  League 
of  Nations  a  vain  dream  of  the  pacifists,  a 
mirage  in  the  moral  desert,  or  is  it  the  logical 
and  inevitable  outcome  of  good  will  to  men? 
Is  war  always  an  abhorrent  thing,  the  mere 
camouflage  of  capitalism  and  exploitation, 
or  are  we  right  when  we  place  the  heroes  of 
Valley  Forge  and  Gettysburg  close  beside 
the  goodly  fellowship  of  apostles  and  proph¬ 
ets?  Is  there  any  middle  ground  between 
Bernhardi  and  Tolstoy?  And  if  so,  how  can 

117 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


we  find  it  in  the  quiet  hour  of  this  Sunday 
morning  service? 

These  are  the  poignant,  searching  ques¬ 
tions  that  come  up  out  of  the  pew  in  war 
time,  and  they  are  not  to  be  answered  by  re¬ 
peating  the  Apostles’  Creed  or  singing  of 
“Jerusalem  the  Golden.”  The  people  are 
groping,  stumbling,  calling  for  guidance, 
hungry  for  truth.  “These  men,”  said  an 
English  chaplain  regarding  his  regiment, 
“are  not  opposed  to  the  church,  but  they  are 
disappointed  in  its  leadership.”  The  most 
deadening  force  in  the  community  may  be  a 
church  that  merely  cries  “Peace”  when  there 
is  no  peace,  or  shouts  “Win  the  war”  without 
any  understanding  of  why  or  how  it  must 
be  won. 

We  may  say  that  we  do  not  wish  to  preach 
war  every  Sunday,  but  the  truth  is  we  can¬ 
not  preach  of  anything  that  does  not  directly 
bear  on  a  world-conflagration.  To  ignore  it 
would  be  to  ignore  the  air  we  breathe.  Why 
does  war  come  to  the  nations,  how  is  it  to  be 
met,  how  may  its  sacrifices  be  borne,  how 
shall  we  deal  with  the  conscientious  objector, 

how  shall  we  keep  the  inner  peace  amid  the 

118 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 

outer  struggle,  how  shall  wars  be  finally 
ended,  and  how  can  this  war  consistently  be 
supported  by  disciples  of  the  Prince  of 
Peace? — these  are  the  insistent  problems 
which  the  church  must  help  to  solve  or  for¬ 
ever  lose  its  power  of  religious  leadership. 
No  rising  for  prayers,  no  shaking  of  an  evan¬ 
gelist’s  hand,  no  baptismal  rites,  no  repeti¬ 
tion  of  ancient  formulas  means  anything  in 
war  time  unless  the  men  who  do  these  things 
know  where  Christ  stands  in  the  modern 
world  and  are  ready  at  any  cost  to  stand  be¬ 
side  him.  In  a  time  of  mental  darkness  and 
spiritual  agony  one  of  the  prime  functions  of 
the  church  is  recovery  of  sight  to  them  that 
are  blind. 

But  the  chief  function  of  the  church  still 
remains:  setting  at  liberty  them  that  are 
bound.  When  Gladstone  was  reproached  for 
his  variations  of  political  opinion  he  an¬ 
swered:  “The  reason  is  very  simple;  I  was 
brought  up  to  dislike  and  distrust  liberty; 
I  have  learned  to  believe  in  it;  that  is  the 
secret  of  all  my  changes.”  The  Christian 
Church  was  founded  on  the  belief  in  liberty. 

Its  earliest  message  was  a  glad  release  from 

119 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


superstition,  from  priestly  oppression,  from 
the  burden  of  man-made  duties  and  man¬ 
made  dogmas.  And  within  twenty  years  its 
greatest  apostle  had  to  issue  the  warning 
cry:  “Be  not  entangled  again  in  the  yoke  of 
bondage!”  The  Christian  Church  was 
founded  in  liberty,  and  it  has  learned  to  dis¬ 
trust,  and  often  dislike,  liberty — that  is  the 
secret  of  its  changes. 

Of  course  this  is  the  penalty  of  having  in¬ 
stitutions  of  any  kind — they  imprison  the 
very  ideas  that  gave  them  birth.  A  great 
musician,  like  Beethoven  or  Wagner,  dares 
to  break  the  conventional  rules  of  music  and 
write  harmonies  which  make  the  hearers 
shiver.  Soon  multitudes  praise  him,  and  es¬ 
tablish  a  new  school  in  music,  and  that  new 
school,  being  duly  organized  and  waxing 
strong,  forbids  any  innovation  and  shivers  at 
the  composer  who  leaves  the  beaten  track  as 
Beethoven  and  Wagner  left  it  many  years 
before. 

A  political  leader  defies  his  party  and, 
drawn  by  a  vision  of  to-morrow,  he  leads 
forth  a  new  group  of  radicals.  Half  a  cen¬ 
tury  later  that  radical  group,  having  estab- 

120 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


lished  themselves  in  power,  deny  the  right  of 
secession  and  pour  contempt  on  any  man 
who  dares  to  follow  their  early  example. 

The  Christian  Church  was  founded  in  a 
superb  protest  against  the  powers  that  be. 
“Woe  unto  you  Pharisees — you  lawyers — 
you  that  are  rich — you  that  oppress  the 
widow  and  the  fatherless!”  It  was  a  divine 
secession  from  a  national  church  that  had 
lost  all  sense  of  divinity.  It  was  an  exodus 
from  a  religious  desert,  a  break  with  the  es¬ 
tablished  and  fossilized  hierarchy,  a  release 
from  burdens  against  which  human  souls 
had  for  centuries  protested.  “Christ  treated 
the  Old  Testament  with  amazing  freedom.” 
Oftm  he  repeated,  “It  has  been  said  by  them 
of  old  time,  but  I  say  unto  you”  something 
very  different.  Under  his  quiet  sentences  is 
the  tlirob  and  heave  of  subterranean  powers 
that  low  and  then  erupt  and  overflow  in  lava 
streams.  But  we  who  come  centuries  later 
find  ihe  molten  streams  have  hardened  into 
rock,  We  build  our  homes  upon  the  arrested 
flow,  ^id  devoutly  hope  never  again  will  the 
subterlanean  forces  disturb  our  dwelling. 

The  gjeat  need  of  the  church  is  to  realize 

121 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


that  it  can  never  succeed  as  an  arrester  of 
movement,  as  a  brake  on  the  wheels,  as  a  con- 
server  of  the  past.  It  can  succeed  only  when 
it  is  true  to  its  original  conception  as  the 
inspirer  of  change,  the  leader  of  migrations, 
the  fountain  of  unceasing  and  resistless 
energy. 

The  mighty  wave  of  democracy  now 
sweeping  round  the  world  will  either  ujlift 
the  church  to  new  leadership  or  leave  it 
stranded  and  deserted.  Do  we,  the  members 
of  the  average  church,  really  believe  in  de¬ 
mocracy  as  the  finest  expression  of  the , 
Christian  temper,  or  do  we  fear  its  crudity, 
its  impulsiveness,  its  resistless  advance?  Do 
the  men  who  sit  at  the  head  of  the  pew  really 
desire  democracy  in  church  meetings,  ir  fac¬ 
tory  and  mill,  in  municipal  government,  or 
does  the  demos  seem  to  them  a  dangerous 
beast,  to  be  confined  as  long  as  possible 
within  the  political  cage?  And  the  nan  in 
the  pulpit — is  he  like  his  Master?  Can  he 
say,  “It  hath  been  said  by  Luther  and  Calvin 
and  the  prayer  book — but  I  say  urto  you 
something  wholly  different”?  Has  he  the 
prophetic  fire  that  burned  at  Penteccst,  that 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


flamed  out  in  Savonarola  and  Wiclif,  or  is 
he  afraid  of  that  fire  and  eager  to  snuff  out 
each  dangerous  spark?  Is  he  a  leader  in 
spiritual  adventure,  so  that  strong  men  de¬ 
light  to  follow  him  over  new  trails  and  up  the 
heights?  Or  has  he  long  since  ceased  to 
climb,  and  become  simply  a  reader  of  the 
guidebooks  which  tell  how  other  men  dared 
to  do  it?  It  was  of  some  such  relapsed  trav¬ 
eler  that  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  wrote : 

“The  frozen  peaks  he  once  explored. 

But  now  he’s  dead  and  by  the  board; 

How  better  far  at  home  to  have  stayed, 
Attended  by  the  parlor  maid!” 

When  we  enter  a  strange  church  on  Sun¬ 
day  we  can  test  it  by  asking  whether  the  mes¬ 
sage  produces  in  us  the  original  sensation  it 
produced  in  Palestine.  Does  it  give  us  the 
feeling  of  opening  doors,  bolts  withdrawn, 
windows  flung  wide,  and  new  vistas  all  along 
the  horizon,  or  does  the  church  make  us  feel 
that  most  doors  are  shut,  that  few  things  are 
permitted  or  possible,  that  the  world  is  a 
smaller  and  bleaker  place  than  we  had 
thought?  “Them  that  are  bound” — the 

phrase  is  pathetic  because  it  includes  so 

123 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


many.  They  do  not  lie  in  visible  dungeons ; 
they  may  sit  in  the  chief  seats  of  the  syna¬ 
gogue,  they  may  ride  in  costly  motor  cars, 
they  may  stand  with  the  dignitaries  at  some 
great  festival,  yet  they  may  be  so  bound  by 
personal  appetite,  by  ancient  superstition, 
by  fear  of  heresy,  by  dogmatic  authority, 
that  all  power  of  leadership  has  vanished,  all 
joy  in  spiritual  adventure  has  become  impos¬ 
sible,  and  New  Testament  Christianity 
seems  a  rather  wild  force  that  must  be  tamed 
before  it  can  be  safely  domiciled. 

“Many  of  these  so-called  doctrines  that 
our  fathers  taught  and  believed  in,”  says  Dr. 
Johnston  Myers,  “are  not  important  for  this 
age.  We  need  not  deny  the  old  truth,  but 
we  need  new  truth  for  the  new  era.”  We 
may  go  further,  and  say  that  if  we  fail  to 
find  new  truth,  we  are  out  of  touch  with  the 
very  genius  of  Christianity.  Christianity 
said  through  its  great  Founder,  “I  have 
many  things  yet  to  say.”  It  said  through 
John  Robinson:  “There  is  much  more  light 
to  break  out  of  God’s  Word.”  It  led  Roger 
Williams  out  of  Massachusetts,  John  Wes¬ 
ley  to  do  his  best  work  outside  of  the  Church 

124 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


of  England,  William  Booth  out  of  the  Meth¬ 
odist  Church,  and  is  always  leading  into 
fresh  fields  and  pastures  new.  So  long  as 
a  man  is  loyal  to  Christ  he  can  be  trusted  to 
go  a  long  way.  If  he  goes  only  a  little  way 
and  stops  in  terror,  we  know  he  is  not  loyal. 

What  we  have  been  saying  applies  with 
special  force  in  war  time,  when  disruption  of 
the  old  and  revelation  of  the  new  come  to 
us  with  sudden  shock.  Processes  that  have 
been  proceeding  slowly  for  a  century  are 
“speeded  up”  and  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
the  change  has  arrived.  Old  maps  of  the 
world  become  swiftly  out  of  date.  Social 
transformations  come  over  night.  Taxes 
that  we  thought  we  never  could  pay  are 
cheerfully  borne.  Government  becomes 
enormously  centralized  and  we  all  acquiesce. 
Our  daily  food  is  controlled  and  divided 
among  us,  our  fuel  is  apportioned  without 
our  consent,  new  laws  are  made  each  week, 
new  powers  given  to  magistrates,  a  new 
nationalization  of  industry  is  achieved,  and 
measures  that  we  ridiculed  or  reviled  are 
adopted  by  a  hundred  millions  without  com¬ 
plaint. 


125 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


And  in  the  relations  of  states  to  one  an¬ 
other  the  changes  are  so  vast,  so  momentous, 
as  to  thrill  or  stun  us.  Twenty  nations, 
some  of  which  bitterly  fought  one  another  in 
former  days,  are  now  leagued  together  for 
mutual  defense  and  for  the  sake  of  saving 
freedom.  Ancient  foes,  like  England  and 
France,  now  are  marching  arm  in  arm ; 
Asiatics  and  Africans  are  working  beside 
European  soldiers.  A  French  general  bends 
over  the  tomb  of  Washington  and  an  Amer¬ 
ican  general  in  Paris  cries,  “Lafayette,  we 
are  here!”  Such  swift  and  dazzling  changes 
constitute  the  most  striking  challenge  and 
the  most  glorious  opportunity  that  ever  came 
to  the  Christian  Church. 

Little  things  have  been  swept  aside — let 
us  hope  forever.  Sectarianism  has  proved  a 
luxury  that  we  may  afford  in  peace,  but  too 
costly  to  be  endured  in  war.  “Our  unhappy 
divisions”  seem  more  unhappy  than  ever  at 
home,  when  they  no  longer  exist  at  the  front. 
The  Jewish  soldier  seizes  a  silver  crucifix 
from  a  dead  comrade  and  holds  it  aloft  be¬ 
fore  the  eyes  of  a  dying  enemy.  All  denomi¬ 
nations  stand  together  in  the  trenches;  may 

126 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


they  not  stand  together  when  the  trenches 
are  filled  up  and  the  boys  come  home?  All 
churches  meet  in  the  same  “hut”  in  the 
camps;  may  they  not  meet  when  the  camps 
dissolve  and  the  captains  and  the  kings  de¬ 
part? 

The  church  is  humiliated,  and  it  ought  to 
be,  that  it  was  so  ramified  and  so  split  into 
fragments  that  the  nations  have  not  been 
able  to  intrust  any  important  war  task  into 
churchly  hands.  The  chaplains  have  done  a 
noble  work,  but  they  had  to  leave  the  super¬ 
vision  of  the  churches  to  do  it.  The  Young 
Men’s  Christian  Association  is  composed 
wholly  of  church  members  and  inspired  by 
the  Christian  faith,  but  it  exists  only  because 
existing  churches  are  so  organized  that  they 
cannot  be  utilized  in  a  national  crisis.  “The 
pathos  of  the  present  time,”  said  the  Arch¬ 
bishop  of  York  on  his  visit  to  America,  “is 
that  men  everywhere  through  the  shock  of 
war  are  being  turned  as  never  before  to 
Jesus  Christ.  Yet  it  is  not  to  the  organized 
Church  of  God  that  they  are  looking  for  a 
manifestation  of  Christ.”  We  all  know  that 

to  be  true.  The  tremendous  crisis  has  made 

127 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


the  Red  Cross,  the  Boy  Scouts,  and  the  Red 
Triangle  bulk  larger  than  ever  in  the  world’s 
confidence,  and  made  institutional  Chris¬ 
tianity  pathetically  conscious  of  a  message  it 
cannot  utter,  and  a  work  it  is  not  yet  or¬ 
ganized  to  do.  We  want  no  new  gospel,  but 
we  want,  and  must  have,  new  organs  of 
utterance,  new  channels  for  action,  if  the 
church  is  to  resume  its  leadership  of  men. 

The  greatest  opportunity  of  two  thousand 
years  will  come  to  the  church  when  the  war 
is  over.  Then  the  great  tasks  of  reconstruc¬ 
tion  will  tax  the  highest  genius  of  civiliza¬ 
tion.  Science,  art,  politics,  government,  law, 
will  all  be  straining  their  utmost  resources 
to  create  a  new  world  on  the  ruins  of  the  old 
one.  But  Christianity  must  arise  and  make 
itself  heard  throughout  civilization  with  a 
new  commandment:  “Thou  shalt  not  rebuild 
the  old  world  order!  Thou  shalt  not  restore 
the  old  tribal  jealousy  and  nationalistic 
hate!  Thou  shalt  not  repair  the  broken 
altars  of  a  tribal  god!”  Then  Christianity 
must  show  to  the  world  the  foundation  of 
peace — good  will  among  men ;  and  the 

method  of  peace — a  League  which  shall  unite 

128 


MORAL  LEADERSHIP 


the  various  states  in  the  constructive  tasks 
of  civilization. 

The  difficulties  are  great,  but  of  the  same 
kind  as  those  which  once  kept  Italy  a  mass 
of  warring  cities,  and  Germany  a  collection 
of  impotent  principalities,  and  America  a 
weak  line  of  mutually  jealous  colonies.  Only 
men  of  imagination  can  dream  of  the  League 
of  States,  and  only  men  of  faith  can  make 
the  dream  come  true.  Rut  to  the  church, 
which  has  always  dreamed  of  one  fold  and 
one  shepherd,  which  has  always  preached  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  the  plan  for  a  great 
international  covenant  comes  as  a  glorious 
vision,  as  a  step  toward  the  visible  revelation 
of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Let  the  church 
now  seize  its  unique  opportunity.  Let  it  not 
be  robbed  of  its  high  mission  by  Socialism 
or  any  other  transient  movement.  It  is 
divinely  and  imperatively  summoned  now  to 
lead,  to  set  men  dreaming  of  the  day  of  God, 
to  unite  men  in  erecting  the  great  new  struc¬ 
ture  of  international  life.  “He  looked  for 
a  city  which  hath  foundations,”  but  he  died 
without  the  sight.  Patriarchs  looked  for  it; 
Christians  build  it. 


129 


Cling  to  faith  beyond  the  forms  of  faith. 

She  reels  not  in  the  storm  of  warring  words, 

She  brightens  at  the  clash  of  “Yes”  and  “No,” 

She  sees  the  best  that  glimmers  through  the  worst. 
She  feels  the  sun  is  hid  but  for  a  night, 

She  spies  the  summer  through  the  winter  bud, 

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  • 

She  finds  the  fountain  where  they  wailed  “Mirage!” 

— Tennyson. 


CHAPTER  V 


LIGHT  O N  THE  CLOUD 

“Men  see  not  the  bright  light  which  is  in 
the  clouds” — so  laments  the  friend  of  Job 
in  a  dark  and  distressful  time.  The  clouds 
themselves  all  can  see.  They  lower,  black 
and  thunderous,  all  along  the  horizon.  Is 
there  any  light  within  them  or  behind  them? 

Many  reports  from  the  battle-scarred 
fields  of  Europe  tell  us  of  the  singing  of 
birds  amid  the  roar  of  the  battle.  When  the 
big  shells  are  bursting  and  the  ground  is 
quaking  and  upheaving,  the  larks  soar  un¬ 
concerned  in  the  sky  and  the  less  famous 
birds  fill  the  trees  and  bushes  with  song. 
Why  do  the  birds  sing?  Is  it  because  they 
see  so  little  of  what  is  going  on,  or  because 
they  see  so  much?  Is  it  because  they  are 
subhuman  and  stupid  and  know  no  better, 
or  is  it  because  they  see  farther  over  the  land¬ 
scape  and  deeper  into  the  sky  than  men  can 

see?  Do  angels  sing  as  well  as  birds,  above 

133 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


the  battlefield?  Certainly,  that  first  Christ¬ 
mas  song  of  “Peace  on  earth”  was  sung 
above  fields  desolated  by  Herod  when  he 
“slew  all  the  children  that  were  in  Bethlehem, 
.  .  .  from  two  years  old  and  under.”  The 
cruelty  that  ravaged  the  earth  could  not 
silence  the  song  of  the  sky. 

Surely  nothing  that  we  may  say  about  the 
incidental  or  ultimate  benefits  that  come  out 
of  the  war  can  be  construed  as  implying  ap¬ 
proval  of  war  as  a  necessity.  We  simply 
wish  to  point  out  that  the  future  is  not 
utterly  black,  the  world  is  not  totally  irra¬ 
tional,  and  human  civilization  is  not  a  foun¬ 
dered  ship  beating  on  the  rocks.  We  wish 
to  show  that  some  good  is  left  when  four 
fifths  of  the  world  is  at  war,  and  that 
thoughtful  souls  need  not  lose  faith  in  either 
God  or  humanity.  The  benefits  of  war  which 
we  are  to  consider  are  none  of  them  intended 
by  those  who  incite  war.  It  was  Pharaoh’s 
bitter  oppression  of  Israel  that  turned  out  to 
mean  Israel’s  freedom  and  glorious  future 
— small  credit  to  Pharaoh !  There  are  bene¬ 
fits  that  flow  out  of  tornadoes  and  typhoid 

fever  and  conflagrations  in  great  cities. 

134 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


These  calamities  furnish  opportunity  for 
splendid  heroisms,  for  demonstrations  of 
human  brotherhood,  for  the  triumph  of  reli¬ 
gious  faith.  The  great  earthquake  and  fire 
that  destroyed  San  Francisco  a  few  years 
ago  is  already  seen  to  be  a  blessing.  The 
frightful  explosion  that  destroyed  a  large 
section  of  Halifax  will  unquestionably  pro¬ 
duce  a  finer  city,  with  better  buildings,  more 
significant  architecture,  safer  and  happier 
homes.  Yet  we  do  not  welcome  earthquake 
or  explosion  or  arson,  as  a  means  of  prog¬ 
ress.  The  progress  comes  as  a  by-product 
or  a  far-away  and  inevitable  result  brought 
about  in  spite  of  human  carelessness  or 
human  cruelty.  Suggestively  and  truly  has 
Goethe  defined  the  devil  as  the  power  that 
“steadily  intends  the  evil  and  steadily  ac¬ 
complishes  the  good.”  What  are  some  of 
the  unintended  mitigations  of  horror,  some 
of  the  gleams  of  light  through  the  clouds  of 
world-tragedy? 

One  remarkable  result  of  war  is  the  moral 

renovation  of  individuals.  Millions  of  men 

are  suddenly  brought  to  question  their  own 

fitness  for  an  arduous  task  and  to  subject 

135 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


themselves  to  the  critical  scrutiny  of  a  gov¬ 
ernment  in  need  of  men.  Millions  are  sud¬ 
denly  compelled  to  ask  themselves:  “What 
am  I  good  for  in  time  of  stress?  What 
worth-while  things  do  I  know  how  to  do? 
What  is  the  value  of  my  service  to  my  fel¬ 
low  men?”  Self-examination,  long  ago  re¬ 
jected  as  a  piece  of  morbid  Puritanism,  is 
suddenly  forced  upon  a  hundred  million  peo¬ 
ple,  all  asking:  “What  shall  I  do,”  not  now 
“to  be  saved,”  but  “to  save  my  country?” 

The  most  obvious  of  the  new  tests  are 
those  regarding  physical  fitness.  Is  the  man 
sound  in  eyes,  in  teeth,  in  feet,  in  wind  and 
limb?  With  petty  exactness  we  insist  that 
if  he  is  sixty-one  inches  in  height  he  must 
weigh  at  least  110  pounds,  and  if  sixty-two 
inches  tall  he  must  weigh  112  pounds,  even 
though  we  know  that  such  a  requirement 
would  have  ruled  out  some  of  the  greatest 
soldiers  of  the  world. 

Then  we  apply  the  deeper  tests  of  psy¬ 
chology.  Has  the  would-be  soldier  a  nerv¬ 
ous  system  that  can  stand  sudden  shock? 
Has  he  self-possession  when  men  around  him 

are  confused  and  terrified?  After  being 

136 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


whirled  around  a  dozen  times  on  a  piano- 
stool  can  he  then  walk  a  chalk-line?  Has  he 
a  sense  of  direction  which  will  enable  him  to 
find  his  way  in  the  dark  over  a  strange  coun¬ 
try  or  through  a  trackless  sky? 

Deeper  yet  and  vastly  more  important  are 
the  tests  of  character.  Can  the  soldier  speak 
the  truth  when  sorely  tempted  to  lie  out  of 
a  disagreeable  situation?  Can  he  keep  his 
soul  clean  and  white  amid  the  fierce  tempta¬ 
tions  of  a  novel  and  exciting  experience? 
Can  he  sacrifice  without  whimpering  all  the 
dear  and  pleasant  things  of  life  for  a  great 
but  distant  ideal?  These  are  precisely  the 
examination  questions  that  were  once  put  to 
Galilean  fishermen:  “Are  ye  able  to  drink 
of  the  cup  that  I  shall  drink  of?” 

The  men  who  are  thus  forced  to  appraise 
their  own  physical  and  moral  selves,  forced 
to  subject  themselves  to  the  pitiless  verdict 
of  their  fellows  and  submit  to  long  and  diffi¬ 
cult  training  in  order  to  attain  fitness,  fre¬ 
quently  undergo  a  surprising  transforma¬ 
tion  in  bearing  and  in  attitude  toward  life. 
The  upsetting  of  civilization  means  the  set¬ 
ting  up  of  some  men.  Men  hitherto  aimless, 

137 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


spineless,  disheveled,  without  any  coherent 
purpose  in  life,  are  suddenly  straightened  up 
and  straightened  out. 

The  great  trouble  that  we  find  with  men 
when  they  enter  college  to-day  is  not  that 
they  are  bad-hearted  but  that  they  are  scat¬ 
ter-brained.  They  are  undisciplined,  loose- 
belted,  and  intellectually  disjointed.  They 
are  moving  in  many  directions  at  the  same 
time  instead  of  moving  toward  any  goal. 
Their  ambitions  end,  like  a  broom,  in  a  mul¬ 
titude  of  small  straws,  when  they  should  end, 
like  a  bayonet,  in  point  and  power.  Such 
men  often  are  versatile,  ingenious,  winsome, 
but  quite  useless  for  any  task.  They  are 
charming  but  sprawling.  And  we  see  these 
men  corraled  by  a  sudden  summons,  pulled 
out  of  the  old  lassitude  and  self-complacency, 
drilled  in  platoons,  subjected  to  heat  and 
cold  and  storm  and  mud  and  endless  priva¬ 
tions,  and  in  thousands  of  cases  inwardly 
transformed.  As  they  walk  the  street  we  see 
a  new  light  in  their  eyes,  a  new  purpose  in 
the  squared  shoulders.  Thousands  of  men 
are  rescued  from  aimlessness  and  stagnation 

and  provided  with  a  purpose  in  living.  Of 

138 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


course  in  many  recruits  the  opposite  result 
is  seen;  there  is  a  coarsening  of  fiber,  a  vul¬ 
garization  of  mind  or  a  descent  to  the  purely 
animal  level.  Also  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  splendid  purpose  injected  into  men  by 
the  emergency  of  war  often  fades  away  when 
the  war  is  over.  The  returned  soldier  is  not 
always  the  saint.  When  the  external  au¬ 
thority  is  relaxed  he  may  slide  back  into  the 
old  shiftless  existence.  But,  after  making 
all  possible  exceptions  and  qualifications,  we 
must  admit  with  gratitude  that  the  tragic 
experience  of  war  means  the  physical  and 
moral  rebirth  of  some  men. 

The  development  of  womanhood  in  war¬ 
time  is  a  striking  phenomenon.  We  have 
seen  thousands  of  women  who  have  lived 
hitherto  a  purely  parasitic  life  suddenly 
awakened  to  responsibility  and  devotion. 
Women  who  have  never  found  a  cause  worth 
living  for,  much  less  dying  for,  have  found 
it  now.  Women  who  have  all  their  lives 
been  consumers,  not  producers,  mere 
spenders  of  a  father’s  or  husband’s  money, 
who  have  given  their  days  to  bridge  or  after¬ 
noon  teas,  and  their  nights  to  doubtful  shows, 

139 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


have  suddenly  discovered  and  faced  their 
own  culpable  uselessness,  have  put  on  the 
white  gown  and  the  red  cross  and  gone  over 
mine-infested  seas  to  do  their  bit.  Love  of 
adventure  is  it,  that  moves  them?  Yes, 
doubtless,  in  part.  Motives  are  always 
mingled,  even  in  the  noblest  action.  Rut  it 
is  also  real  weariness  with  a  life  that  does  not 
count,  real  revolt  from  existence  that  has 
no  moral  or  social  value,  real  desire  to  co¬ 
operate  with  the  great  leaders  of  humanity 
in  ushering  in  a  finer  and  nobler  era  for  the 
world.  And  when  they  come  back  from  the 
front  they  can  never  be  quite  so  naively  use¬ 
less  again. 

The  growth  of  the  capacity  to  make  sacri¬ 
fice  for  an  ideal  is  noteworthy  in  war-time. 
Men  learn  to  do  without  things,  they  learn 
how  few  things  are  essential,  how  soul-satis¬ 
fying  it  is  to  strip  off  luxuries  and  super¬ 
fluities,  to  put  one’s  bare  body  against  danger 
and  one’s  bare  soul  against  the  gaze  of  God. 
Things  are  no  longer  in  the  saddle,  but  are 
replaced  by  a  great  purpose  and  a  new  ideal. 
And  when  the  externals  of  life  are  thus 

stripped  away,  and  the  eye  is  turned  inward 

140 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


and  upward,  the  world  of  the  spirit  becomes 
luminous  and  glows  with  the  light  of  revela¬ 
tion.  Boys  in  their  teens  develop  a  spiritual 
experience  denied  to  most  men  of  middle 
age.  Daily  contact  with  death,  which  must 
bring  to  some  men  stoicism  or  dogged  fatal¬ 
ism,  brings  to  others  an  insight  into  the 
motive  and  meaning  of  life  which  transforms 
young  boys  into  the  prophets  and  seers  of 
a  new  age.  Thus  Charles  Hamilton  Sorley, 
a  student  from  the  University  of  Cambridge 
who  was  killed  in  action  on  October  13, 1915, 
at  the  age  of  twenty,  wrote  words  which  may 
be  a  greater  gift  to  the  world  than  years  of 
ordinary  prosaic  living  could  have  been : 

“From  morn  to  midnight,  all  day  through, 

I  laugh  and  play  as  others  do. 

I  sin  and  chatter,  just  the  same 
As  others  with  a  different  name. 

“And  all  year  long  upon  the  stage, 

I  dance  and  tumble  and  do  rage 
So  vehemently,  I  scarcely  see 
The  inner  and  eternal  me. 

“I  have  a  temple  I  do  not 
Visit,  a  heart  I  have  forgot, 

A  self  that  I  have  never  met, 

A  secret  shrine — and  yet,  and  yet 

141 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


“This  sanctuary  of  my  soul 
Unwittingly  I  keep  white  and  whole, 
Unlatched  and  lit,  if  Thou  shouldst  care 
To  enter  or  to  tarry  there. 

“With  parted  lips  and  outstretched  hands 
And  listening  ears,  Thy  servant  stands; 

Call  Thou  early,  call  Thou  late, 

To  Thy  great  service  dedicate.” 

Do  boys  of  twenty  write  like  that?  Never 
until  some  mighty  summons  to  sacrifice  has 
purged  their  souls  and  burned  out  all  petty 
ambitions  and  qualified  them  for  spiritual 
leadership.  Then  their  twenty  years  may 
include  richer  and  deeper  experience  than 
fourscore  years  spent  in  the  chimney  corner 
or  the  club  window. 

Another  striking  by-product  of  war  is  an 
unprecedented  impulse  to  national  unity. 
All  parties  and  creeds,  all  institutions  and 
organizations,  all  sections  of  the  social  order 
suddenly  come  together  and  close  up  in  the 
presence  of  the  common  danger  from  with¬ 
out.  The  nation  suddenly  realizes  that  it 
can  no  longer  support  hair-splitting  distinc¬ 
tions  and  rival  organizations.  At  the  front 
there  is  a  strange  enforced  democracy  that 
is  startlingly  suggestive.  One  young  man 

142 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


just  returned  from  driving  an  ambulance 
said:  “The  man  who  brought  us  our  mail 
every  morning  had  been  a  chauffeur  in  New 
York;  the  man  next  me  was  a  professor  in 
the  University  of  Chicago.  On  the  other 
side  my  neighbors  were  a  Russian  count  who 
had  been  living  in  America  and  an  attractive 
boy  from  a  New  England  high  school.”  This 
compulsory  commingling  of  strangers  and 
aliens,  this  bare  democracy  under  military 
pressure,  is  one  of  the  most  far-reaching  and 
eye-opening  experiences  that  can  come  to  a 
nation.  These  men  thus  forced  to  sleep  and 
eat  and  suffer  together,  thus  compelled  to 
look  into  each  other’s  souls  for  months  at 
a  time,  can  never  be  quite  so  separated  by 
artificial  distinctions  again.  At  least  for  a 
time  the  rich  man  has  seen  the  heroism  of  the 
poor,  for  a  time  the  poor  man  has  learned  the 
simple  human  qualities  of  the  rich,  at  least 
for  one  period  in  its  life  the  nation  has  re¬ 
verted  to  the  days  of  ancient  Rome: 

“Then  none  was  for  a  party, 

Then  all  were  for  the  state, 

Then  the  great  man  helped  the  poor 

And  the  poor  man  loved  the  great.” 

143 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


This  leveling  process  may  indeed  mean  a 
leveling  down ;  it  may  mean  the  submergence 
of  ideals  in  a  common  ruck  of  daily  neces¬ 
sities.  That  is  the  danger  of  all  democracy, 
in  war  and  in  peace.  But  we  do  not  believe 
it  is  usually  true  that,  in  Emerson’s  phrase, 
“men  descend  to  meet.”  Rather  we  hold 
that  men  ascend  by  meeting.  If  we  can 
strip  men  of  accidental  and  irrelevant  dis¬ 
tinctions  and  bring  them  close  together  in 
pursuit  of  a  common  purpose,  the  benefits 
are  inevitable  and  permanent. 

But  it  is  the  unity  at  home  which  is  most 
striking  because  it  is  not  physical  at  all,  but 
wholly  psychological  and  moral.  We  have 
been  a  polyglot  people  in  America,  de¬ 
scended  from  many  diverse  ancestors,  carry¬ 
ing  conflicting  ideals  of  liberty  and  happi¬ 
ness.  We  have  fought  one  another  at  the 
polls,  in  the  newspapers,  in  conventions,  and 
once  through  four  tragic  years  of  civil  war. 
Would  America  ever  achieve  any  real  unity, 
ever  find  her  soul?  And  while  we  were  ask¬ 
ing  that  question,  a  marvelous  process  was 
going  on  before  our  eyes.  The  managers 
of  vast  private  business  enterprises  were  on 

144 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


their  way  to  Washington,  to  serve  the  gov¬ 
ernment  at  one  dollar  a  year.  The  leaders 
of  organized  labor  were  conferring  with  the 
President  of  the  republic.  The  chief  sup¬ 
porters  of  the  President  were  men  of  the 
opposite  political  faith.  Conservatives  and 
radicals,  reactionaries  and  forward-looking 
men,  university  professors  and  day  laborers, 
men  of  thought  and  men  of  action,  were 
standing  shoulder  to  shoulder  as  never  before 
in  the  history  of  the  country.  The  nation  was 
never  so  united  in  the  American  Revolution, 
when  the  number  of  Tories  constituted  from 
one  fifth  to  three  fifths  of  the  population  in 
each  colony  and  tens  of  thousands  of  them 
emigrated  to  Canada.  It  was  not  so  united 
in  the  Civil  War,  when  even  in  Northern 
States  multitudes  would  placate  and  soothe 
the  “erring  sisters”  rather  than  defend  the 
Union  by  force. 

What  brought  about  this  extraordinary 
and  swift  unification  of  sentiment  and  will? 
Nothing  but  a  clear-cut  and  world-wide 
moral  issue.  It  is  not  the  loss  of  a  few  Amer¬ 
ican  lives,  not  the  destruction  of  a  little 

American  property.  It  is  the  monstrous  and 

145 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


immoral  theory  of  a  certain  warrior  class 
across  the  seas,  the  pretensions  of  a  military 
caste,  the  assertion  of  might  in  the  face  of 
all  the  rights  of  mankind,  which  have 
wrought  this  marvelous  unity  of  soul  and 
made  a  hundred  million  think  and  feel  as 
one  man.  There  is  no  welding  power  on 
earth  equal  to  the  power  of  a  conviction  of 
righteousness.  Lust  of  land,  desire  for 
plunder,  thirst  for  glory,  may  bind  men  to¬ 
gether  for  a  time,  but  only  a  white-hot  con¬ 
viction  of  right  can  fuse  a  nation.  With 
deep  reverence  we  might  almost  dare  to 
form  a  new  beatitude:  “Blessed  are  they  that 
do  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  for 
they  shall  be  united.” 

This  is  the  true  naturalization  of  immi¬ 
grants.  No  papers  or  documents  can  make 
a  stranger  into  an  American.  The  mere 
legal  process  may  leave  the  foreigner  cold 
and  alien,  included  but  unassimilated.  He 
must  be  baptized  into  the  spirit  of  America, 
into  our  faiths  and  hopes  and  sacrifices,  into 
sympathy  with  the  founders  and  leaders  who 
lived  and  died  for  our  ideals,  or  he  is  not 
truly  naturalized. 


146 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


In  front  of  the  City  Hall  in  the  city  of 
Newark  is  a  statue  of  Abraham  Lincoln  by 
Borglum.  The  great  bronze  figure  is  seated 
on  a  bench,  and  often  school  children  climb 
upon  that  bench  and  nestle  in  the  gaunt 
bronze  arm  of  the  seated  Lincoln.  Recently 
an  immigrant  father,  a  long-bearded  Rus¬ 
sian  peasant,  was  seen  standing  with  his  lit¬ 
tle  daughter  before  the  statue,  while  she  was 
explaining  in  the  father’s  native  tongue  who 
Lincoln  was,  what  he  said  and  did,  and  how 
he  died.  The  foreign  father  listened  with 
impassive  countenance  and  then  was  swept 
by  sudden  emotion.  Reverently  he  lifted  his 
small  daughter  with  his  great  knotted  hands 
toward  the  bronze  figure  and  she  imprinted 
a  kiss  on  the  furrowed  cheek.  Then  the  two 
went  in  silence  to  their  meager  home. 

That  is  the  true  naturalization  of  the  alien ! 
That  goes  far  beyond  the  legal  formality,  and 
is  a  real  adoption  into  the  spirit  and  temper, 
the  principles  and  ideals  of  America.  With¬ 
out  it  we  remain  dissevered,  discordant, 
belligerent;  with  it  we  are  one  in  power  to 
toil,  to  sacrifice,  to  achieve.  The  unity  of  the 

nation  is  not  economic,  since  man  does  not 

147 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


live  by  bread  only ;  not  legislative,  since  laws 
are  powerless  unless  the  people’s  will  is  be¬ 
hind  them;  not  governmental,  since  govern¬ 
ment  has  no  reality  apart  from  the  consent 
of  the  governed.  The  unity  of  the  nation  is 
moral  and  spiritual ;  it  consists  in  ideals  held 
dearer  than  life,  principles  ingrained  in  mil¬ 
lions  of  souls,  and  the  dedication  of  the  whole 
people  to  the  protection  of  the  weakest  and 
feeblest  among  us.  This  spiritual  fusion  is 
achieved  for  many  in  days  of  peace ;  but  it  is 
achieved  on  a  vast  scale  and  with  incredible 
swiftness  in  the  high  temperatures  of  a  na¬ 
tion  struggling  for  liberty. 

Another  shaft  of  light  out  of  the  cloud  is 

seen  in  the  unifying  of  Christian  forces  in 

the  vast  work  of  ministration  to  the  bodies 

and  souls  of  men.  When  we  see  a  hundred 

million  dollars  subscribed  in  a  few  days  for 

the  work  of  a  purely  voluntary  Christian 

Association,  when  we  see  that  Association 

recognized  and  highly  valued  by  all  existing 

governments,  its  workers  welcomed  to  camps 

and  prisons  in  every  grief-stricken  land,  and 

millions  of  soldiers  crying,  “I  was  sick,  and 

ye  visited  me:  I  was  in  prison,  and  ye  came 

148 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


unto  me,”  we  are  witnessing  one  of  the  great¬ 
est  religious  movements  in  all  history,  whose 
story  will  be  told  centuries  hence  as  one  of 
the  gesta  Christi.  The  Young  Men’s  Chris¬ 
tian  Association  is  the  Christian  Church 
lifted  above  its  petty  divisions,  inspired  by 
a  vision  of  human  need,  willing  at  last  to 
sidetrack  its  ritual,  its  dogma,  its  tithing  of 
mint,  anise  and  cummin,  and  apply  itself 
whole-heartedly  and  unreservedly  to  the  cry¬ 
ing  woes  and  dangers  of  the  world.  Its 
superb  crusade,  not  to  possess  Christ’s 
sepulcher  but  to  incarnate  his  life,  carries  us 
back  to  the  social  and  moral  passion  of  the 
first  three  centuries,  when  the  Christian  faith 
spread  all  through  Europe,  winning  its  great 
victories  not  by  miracle  or  argument  but  by 
the  humble  lives  of  believers  who  embodied 
their  faith  in  their  daily  deeds. 

The  denominations  were  standing 
asunder,  and  so  were  powerless  to  meet  this 
need.  No  one  of  them  could  be  recognized 
by  any  government  without  bitter  complaint 
from  all  the  others.  Hence  the  Association 
steps  in  as  an  undenominational  and  inter¬ 
national  church,  denying  no  Christian 

149 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


dogma,  repudiating  no  ritual,  but  willing  to 
postpone  debatables  until  the  undebatable 
need  of  humanity  has  been  met  by  Christian 
love.  In  the  familiar  “hut”  all  faiths — 
Protestant,  Catholic,  and  Hebrew — are  wel¬ 
come.  There  we  see  dogma  at  its  lowest 
terms  and  religion  at  its  highest  power.  In 
one  Siberian  hut  thronged  by  Mohammedan 
prisoners  many  copies  of  the  Koran  were 
distributed,  because,  as  the  secretary  simply 
said,  “It  is  better  that  these  poor  fellows 
should  pray  in  their  own  way  than  not  to 
pray  at  all.”  Could  not  such  largeness  of 
sympathy  be  shown  in  days  of  peace? 
Surely;  yet  it  was  not  shown  until  the  shat¬ 
tering  of  human  ambitions  by  world-wide 
tragedy  had  carried  Christians  beyond  the 
circumference  to  the  glowing,  imperishable 
center  of  the  Christian  faith. 

And  thousands  of  other  institutions  sud¬ 
denly  began  to  live  not  to  enlarge  themselves, 
but  to  serve  the  nation  and  enrich  mankind. 
For  many  years  the  colleges  have  sent  out 
bulletins  each  autumn  announcing,  “Largest 
number  of  students  in  our  history.”  Would 

any  college  be  proud  of  such  a  bulletin  in 

150 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


time  of  war?  By  a  sudden  inversion  of  pro¬ 
cedure  the  colleges  vie  with  one  another  in 
announcement  of  diminished  enrollments 
and  depleted  treasuries.  The  college  with 
the  greatest  loss  of  numbers  and  the  largest 
deficit  feels  itself  most  truly  enriched  in  the 
imponderables  of  spiritual  possession. 

Swiftly  other  institutions  follow.  Every 

theater  drops  its  curtain  in  the  middle  of  the 

evening  that  an  appeal  for  the  Red  Cross 

or  for  some  form  of  relief  may  be  made. 

Ambulances  are  sent  by  hundreds  across  the 

sea.  Every  club  or  society  has  its  War- 

Work  Committee.  Every  newspaper  gives 

freely  its  space  to  appeals  to  the  mind  and 

heart  of  the  nation.  The  click  of  flying 

needles  is  heard  at  every  lecture  and  almost 

every  concert.  The  dwellers  in  hotels  gather 

constantly,  rolling  bandages  and  filling 

boxes  for  unseen  comrades  beyond  the  ocean. 

A  great  wave  of  altruism  sweeps  over  the 

land  and  a  sense  of  the  partnership  of  each 

with  all  uplifts  and  ennobles  the  entire  social 

order.  As  John  Jay  Chapman  has  said, 

“The  mystics  have  always  told  us  that  every 

private  act  carried  with  it  consequences  to 

151 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


the  life  of  all  men  and  the  future  of  hu¬ 
manity.  But  no  one  ever  thought  that  a 
man  would  say  to  us:  Drop  that  piece  of 
white  bread  which  you  are  raising  to  your 
lips!  The  fate  of  the  world  five  hundred 
years  hence  is  at  stake.”  There  are,  of  course, 
obvious  and  appalling  exceptions.  There 
are  profiteers  and  grafters,  men  who  have 
no  aim  but  to  exploit  human  sorrow  and  put 
money  in  their  purse.  These  are  warts  and 
moles  on  the  body  politic.  But  its  heart  is 
sound. 

The  willingness  to  sacrifice  for  a  brother’s 
need,  a  brother  forever  to  be  unseen  and  un¬ 
known,  the  cheerful  yielding  to  restrictions 
inconceivable  in  days  of  peace,  is  a  genuine 
revelation  to  us  all.  Food  and  light  and 
heat,  meat  and  sugar  and  coal  and  a  score 
of  things  that  we  have  regarded  as  private 
property  are  now  seen  as  part  of  the  com¬ 
mon  stock  of  civilization,  as  physical  means 
to  ideal  ends.  The  ton  of  coal  or  the  pound 
of  sugar  belongs  to  humanity’s  great  store¬ 
house;  it  is  the  possession  of  all  liberty-lov¬ 
ing  men;  and  a  passage  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  which  we  have  always  explained  away 

152 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


now  suddenly  becomes  the  expression  of  the 
national  ideal:  “Neither  said  any  of  them 
that  aught  which  he  possessed  was  his  own; 
but  they  had  all  things  common.” 

What  changes  shall  come  to  the  social 
order  out  of  the  universal  reorganization 
forced  by  war,  no  man  can  tell.  We  have 
watched  the  Russian  revolution  with  hope 
and  yet  with  fear.  Those  who  struggle  for 
democracy  may  get  more  of  it  than  they 
want.  But  they  cannot  get  more  than  Chris¬ 
tianity  wants.  Already  a  change  of  temper, 
a  new  scale  of  values,  has  permeated  civiliza¬ 
tion.  Never  again  can  we  return  to  the  old 
petty  individualism  and  laissez-faire.  The 
new  world  will  be  newly  organized.  The 
only  welcome  man  will  be  the  man  qualified 
for  team  work.  “Me”  and  “mine”  will  be 
small  words  in  a  new  world  which  has  learned 
to  say  the  great  word  “our.” 

Another  striking  result  of  war  is  the  clear 
conviction  of  sin.  War  is  a  great  revealer 
of  motives.  It  lays  bare  the  long-cherished 
purpose,  it  exposes  the  festering  hatred,  it 
throws  a  lurid  light  upon  our  past.  We  ask : 
“Why  did  this  awful  tragedy  fall  upon  the 

153 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

peoples?  What  seed  did  we  sow  that  could 
thus  spring  up  armed  men?”  We  are  driven 
to  self-scrutiny,  we  go  home  with  ourselves 
— and  acquaintance  with  self  is  a  rare 
achievement  in  the  modern  world.  War  sets 
whole  nations  discussing  the  ethical  aspects 
of  human  action,  pondering  the  place  of 
morals  in  commerce  and  government  and 
diplomacy.  It  sets  us  asking:  “Is  our 
boasted  civilization  any  real  advance  on  the 
wonderful  life  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
age  of  Dante?  Are  we  living  on  a  higher 
plane  than  did  the  Greeks  in  the  days  of 
Pericles?  This  constant  increase  in  arma¬ 
ment,  this  appalling  multiplication  of  en¬ 
gines  of  destruction,  is  it  a  rational  or  is  it 
an  insane  proceeding?  What  infection  is  at 
the  root  of  our  life  which  makes  it  blossom 
in  this  poisonous  flower?  If  we  in  fear  sud¬ 
denly  effect  certain  great  reforms,  could  we 
not  have  done  the  same  things  without  wait¬ 
ing  for  the  coming  of  the  terror?” 

We  have  made  great  camps  sanitary  and 
wholesome  places  for  men  to  live  in.  Why 
did  we  not  do  the  same  thing  for  the  factory 
villages  where  men  sicken  and  babies  die? 

154 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


We  have  surrounded  the  camps  with  a 
“barred  zone”;  could  we  not  surround  the 
college  and  the  bank  and  the  mill  with  a  zone 
of  protection  for  young  and  eager  manhood? 
We  have  insisted  on  character  behind  the 
khaki;  might  we  not  demand  character  in 
evening  dress?  If  we  banish  the  canteen, 
could  we  not  muster  courage  to  banish  the 
saloon?  Or  is  our  war-time  reformation 
totally  nonmoral,  mere  spasmodic  action 
under  stress  of  fear? 

We  have  fed  the  Belgians  nobly;  could  we 
not  feed  the  slums  of  New  York?  We  have 
offered  our  resources,  our  time,  and  our 
strength  to  the  government ;  why  not  before 
war  came?  We  have  kept  open  the  hospital 
and  the  “hut”  every  day  and  all  night;  why 
do  we  open  our  churches  but  four  hours  a 
week?  We  have  forgotten  sect  and  party 
and  overleaped  all  barriers  to  reach  our  fel¬ 
low  men.  Do  we  intend  to  construct  again 
all  those  barriers  when  the  war  is  over  ?  Do 
we  intend  to  contract  once  more  our  sym¬ 
pathies  and  exclude  from  fellowship  nine 
tenths  of  those  who  profess  and  call  them¬ 
selves  Christians?  We  have  prayed  ferv- 

155 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


ently  since  the  war  came;  why  did  we  not 
pray  before  ? 

“Eyes  that  the  preacher  could  not  school 
By  wayside  graves  are  raised; 

And  lips  say,  ‘God  be  pitiful,’ 

That  ne’er  said,  ‘God  be  praised.’  ” 

Surely  from  the  battlefield  of  the  nations 
comes  a  searchlight  that  sweeps  over  our 
past  and  reveals  the  evils  that  we  have  per¬ 
mitted  to  dwell  among  us. 

We  see  ourselves  at  last  and  cannot  ad¬ 
mire  all  that  we  see.  We  have  discovered 
the  imperialistic  aims  in  enlightened  Chris¬ 
tian  governments,  we  have  discovered  social 
injustice  in  our  cities  and  moral  stagnation 
in  rural  life.  We  have  laid  bare  the  roots 
of  industrial  unrest,  we  have  stripped  away 
the  mask  from  employees  who  have  no 
loyalty  to  their  task,  and  employers  who 
have  no  human  interest  in  their  men.  We 
have  begun  to  realize  that  men  who  are  home¬ 
less  and  hopeless  in  days  of  peace  cannot 
be  suddenly  converted  into  efficient  soldiers 
in  days  of  war.  We  have  learned  that  if 
we  ignore  the  children  in  the  tenements,  we 


LIGHT  ON  THE  CLOUD 


shall  later  find  anaemic  and  unfit  men  in  our 
trenches. 

When  the  millions  of  soldiers  return  to 
their  homes,  it  will  be  with  a  changed  per¬ 
spective  and  a  new  sense  of  values.  After 
the  great  democracy  of  military  service  will 
they  willingly  accept  a  peaceful  economic 
subordination?  After  working  not  for 
wages,  but  for  country,  for  honor,  for  free¬ 
dom,  will  they  return  with  the  same  aims  and 
ambitions  as  before  they  left  their  homes? 
How  will  the  homeland  seem  to  those  men 
when  they  view  it  again  after  their  great  ex¬ 
perience  ?  To  all  of  us,  whether  we  serve  the 
cause  of  freedom  at  the  front  or  in  the  home, 
there  is  coming  a  new  perspective  and  a  con¬ 
sequent  reorganization  of  life.  But  we  face 
that  future  without  foreboding.  Because 
we  believe  in  God  we  dare  to  greet  the  un¬ 
seen  with  a  cheer ! 


157 


To  that  primeval  passion  may  we  yet 

Give  ampler  range  in  fields  of  vaster  marge. 
’Gainst  war  itself,  when  this  war  passes,  let 
Our  bugles  sound  a  charge. 

— William  Watson. 

Those  about  her 

From  her  shall  read  the  perfect  ways  of  love, 
And  by  those  claim  their  greatness,  not  by  blood. 

— Shakespeare. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  REBUILDING  OF  THE 

WORLD 

In  the  great  prose-poem  that  we  call  the 
“Book  of  Revelation” — a  poem  quite  Ori¬ 
ental,  mysterious,  and  at  times  bizarre — we 
find  much  that  baffles  our  prosaic  Western 
mind.  It  certainly  is  not  a  time-table  of 
the  future,  and  all  attempts  to  find  in  it 
definite  predictions  of  things  to  come  have 
proved  illusive  and  futile.  But  its  majestic 
symbolism  has  made  it  a  treasure-house  and 
armory  for  all  the  reformers  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  world.  One  sentence  in  it  sets  our 
minds  traveling  to  far  horizons:  “I  saw  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.” 

Apparently,  the  new  heaven  came  first  in 
the  prophet’s  vision.  The  earth  did  not  of 
itself  rise  and  develop  into  a  celestial  city. 
But  the  new  city  descended  out  of  heaven  to 

the  old  chaotic  earth  and  transformed  it. 

161 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


The  ideal  world  must  appear  in  clear  outlines 
before  the  actual  material  world  can  be  re¬ 
shaped.  Vision  must  come  before  reforma¬ 
tion.  Frederic  Harrison  says  that  mankind 
will  not  “listen  to  a  religion  that  is  up  in  the 
sky.”  The  fact  is  mankind  will  never  listen 
permanently  to  anything  else.  The  old  earth 
needs  not  to  be  patched  up  here  and  there, 
but  it  needs  to  be  laid  out  on  a  wholly  new 
plan;  it  needs  to  be  reconstructed  socially, 
politically,  and  spiritually  after  a  new  pat¬ 
tern.  If  statesmen  and  reformers  and  mis¬ 
sionaries  have  no  vision,  they  are  like  a  stone¬ 
cutter  without  a  “blue-print,”  endlessly  ham¬ 
mering  and  chipping  at  granite  blocks,  with 
no  pattern  to  direct  his  chisel  and  no  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  relation  of  one  block  to  another 
in  the  rising  walls.  The  busier  the  stone¬ 
cutters  are,  the  greater  the  chaos  they  pro¬ 
duce  unless  they  have  seen  the  pattern  in 
the  mount.  The  worst  possible  new  world 
would  be  one  created  by  zeal  and  good  in¬ 
tentions  without  intelligence  and  vision. 
Unless  we  carry  the  new  heaven,  the  new 
ideal,  within,  we  can  never  remold  the  world 
without. 


162 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


That  new  ideal  obviously  means  a  new  and 
higher  conception  of  God.  The  growth  of 
“new  thought”  in  our  age  is  a  remarkable 
phenomenon.  It  may  take  the  form  of 
Christian  Science,  with  its  revered  book  and 
revered  founder,  with  its  churches  and  pub¬ 
lications  and  extensive  organization,  or  it 
may  be  found  in  a  fugitive  leaflet  urging  us 
to  concentrate  our  minds  on  truth  and 
beauty.  It  may  take  the  form  of  an  attempt 
at  philosophical  system,  as  in  the  writings 
of  Trine  and  Dresser,  or  it  may  be  a  mere 
exhortation  to  deep  breathing,  introspection, 
and  opening  the  mind  to  occult  powers.  It 
is  sometimes  pantheistic  and  mystical,  and 
sometimes  is  a  frank  endeavor  to  secure  by 
mental  means  simply  physical  health  and 
financial  success.  But  everywhere  its  origin 
is  the  same — profound  dissatisfaction  with 
the  current  conception  of  God.  The  new 
modes  of  thought  do  not  formally  deny  that 
current  conception;  but  they  turn  away  from 
it,  because  they  find  in  it  no  nutriment,  no 
daily  help,  no  lasting  peace.  It  seems  to 
them  hopelessly  anthropomorphic,  crude,  un¬ 
spiritual,  antiquated. 

163 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

The  Great  War  has  accentuated  the  diffi¬ 
culty.  On  the  one  hand  it  has  raised  up 
again  the  old  conception  of  a  God  of  battles, 
“Lord  of  our  far-flung  battle  line,”  a  su¬ 
preme  war  lord,  a  glorified  military  chief¬ 
tain;  and  on  the  other  hand  it  has  driven 
men  to  a  new  faith  in  a  God  greater  than 
all  creeds  or  sanctuaries  that  have  tried  to 
contain  him,  more  spiritual  than  any  image 
we  can  form  within,  a  God  who  is  light, 
harmony,  purpose,  universal  love  in  which 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  When 
we  see  belligerent  nations  calling  on  the 
same  God  while  they  imbrue  their  hands  in 
one  another’s  blood,  we  are  driven  to  one  of 
two  conclusions :  either  there  is  no  God  at  all 
and  each  nation  is  worshiping  its  own  fig¬ 
ment  of  imagination,  or  the  true  God  of  the 
universe  is  vaster,  nobler,  than  these  nations 
have  yet  dreamed.  We  are  driven  to  choose 
between  a  tribal  god,  invented  to  stir  and 
inflame  the  multitude,  and  a  God  who  is 
universal  presence,  unconfined  to  any 
church,  unallied  with  any  nation,  incom¬ 
pletely  expressed  in  any  creed  or  philoso¬ 
phy,  known  only  to  the  pure  in  heart.  The 

164 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


Great  War  has  made  life’s  burdens  so  awful, 
its  contradictions  so  intolerable,  that  we  must 
have  a  greater  God  or  none  at  all. 

A  static  God,  sitting  on  a  throne,  can 
never  satisfy  an  age  in  which  thrones  are 
toppling  and  the  struggling  peoples  of  the 
world  are  coming  into  their  own.  Mr.  Wells 
in  his  new-found  fantastic  theology  pro¬ 
claims  a  demiurge  whom  he  calls  the  “In¬ 
visible  King.”  But  the  world  is  “tired  of 
kings”  and  that  symbol  localizes  and  de¬ 
grades  the  Spirit  of  the  universe.  The 
“throne”  has  stood  through  all  history  and 
stands  to-day  for  an  authority  static,  local¬ 
ized,  arbitrary,  against  which  the  world  is 
in  revolt.  The  God  who  “came  down”  to 
see  what  was  going  on  at  the  building 
of  Babel,  the  tribal  God  of  Joshua,  Solo¬ 
mon’s  God  who  dwelt  between  the  cherubim 
on  a  golden  chest,  Milton’s  God  who  laid  out 
the  earth  with  celestial  compasses,  Cotton 
Mather’s  God  who  commanded  the  torture 
of  New  England  witches,  and  “Der  alte 
Gott,”  with  dripping  sword  stamped  on  Ger¬ 
man  coins  of  to-day — all  these  images  must 

give  way  to  the  God  for  whom  a  torn  world 

165 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


is  crying,  the  God  of  Jesus,  who  is  Spirit 
and  Truth. 

Our  world  thirsts  for  the  living  God, 
which  means  a  God  with  all  that  character¬ 
izes  the  highest  life  we  know.  He  must  be 
personal ;  that  is,  he  must  have  consciousness, 
purpose,  will ;  but  he  must  be  stripped  of  all 
the  petty  limitations  of  “persons”  as  we 
know  them.  He  is  not  a  person  like  Caesar 
or  Charlemagne  or  Shakespeare;  they  were 
but  sparks  or  fragments  of  personal  spirit, 
transient  attempts  at  personality,  momen¬ 
tary  hints  of  what  Spirit  may  be.  The 
“three  persons”  of  the  historic  creeds  cannot 
adequately  describe  him,  nor  could  ten  thou¬ 
sand  persons  set  him  forth.  He  is  the  only 
real  person,  that  is,  the  only  complete  con¬ 
sciousness,  the  only  never  faltering  purpose, 
the  only  wholly  righteous  will,  the  only  per¬ 
fect  love.  And  if  the  essence  of  personality 
is  purposive  love,  love  that  never  faileth, 
love  that  can  never  know  final  defeat,  then 
in  God  we  must  see,  as  our  fathers  did  not, 
perpetual  struggle  to  embody  love  in  action, 
eternal  urge  toward  the  incarnation  of  good¬ 
ness.  Since  the  highest  and  noblest  thing  in 

166 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


us  is  the  moral  struggle,  we  must  find  in  God 
that  eternal  struggle,  ever  ending  in  tri¬ 
umphant  peace,  and  then  developing  out  of 
that  peace  again  struggle  and  the  achieve¬ 
ments  of  creative  love.  That,  and  that  alone, 
is  the  highest  life  we  can  conceive.  The 
divine  existence  is  not  that  of  an  Alexander 
or  a  Solomon  on  a  gorgeous  throne,  nor  is 
it  the  existence  of  a  blind  force  or  energy  like 
gravitation  or  radio-activity.  It  is  the  Life 
in  which  all  lives  are  included,  the  Personal 
Presence  of  which  all  human  persons  are  in¬ 
finitesimal  facets,  the  unceasing  triumphant 
Energy  which  is  present  in  our  struggle, 
shares  and  suffers  in  our  suffering  that  we 
may  share  in  his  daily  triumph  and  his  in¬ 
effable  peace. 

And  this  new  thought  of  God  will  include 

a  new  idea  of  man.  In  learned  treatises  we 

have  set  forth  man  as  an  “economic  unit” — 

dreary  descent  of  man  indeed!  We  have 

pictured  man  not  as  a  little  lower  than  the 

angels,  but  a  little  higher  than  the  brutes. 

We  have  somehow  thought  that  when  we 

have  discovered  his  origin  we  have  fathomed 

his  purpose  and  ideal.  But  the  creek  from 

167 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


which  a  ship  sets  sail  may  give  no  hint  of  the 
spacious  port  at  which  it  shall  arrive.  We 
have  discovered  so  many  things  about  the 
origin  of  life  that  we  have  shut  our  eyes  to 
its  goal.  The  great  question,  after  all,  is 
not  where  we  came  from  but  whither  we  are 

i 

going.  The  nineteenth  century  dealt  mainly 
with  origins ;  the  twentieth  century  must  deal 
with  goals. 

The  great  tide  of  democracy  now  swelling 
and  rolling  round  the  world  is  sure  to  com¬ 
bine  with  the  great  Christian  conception  of 
man  as  the  image  or  incarnation  of  God,  and 
the  resulting  faith,  whether  we  call  it  demo¬ 
cratic  Christianity  or  Christian  democracy, 
will  sweep  away  all  cheap  and  cheapening 
conceptions  of  the  individual  man.  Men  are 
not  puppets  nor  pawns,  to  be  moved  about 
by  monarchs  or  monopolists;  they  are  not 
“hands,”  or  tools,  or  means  of  production. 
They  are  not  the  rebel  subjects  of  a  king  in 
the  sky,  and  so  they  shall  not  be  the  economic 
tools  of  a  proprietor  in  the  office.  They  are 
pulses  in  the  divine  life,  “charged  with  the 
same  creative  energy  that  sets  the  planets 

whirling.”  They  are  as  incandescent  bulbs, 

168 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


fragile  enough,  but  luminous  and  glowing 
with  the  mighty  current  generated  at  the 
dynamic  center  of  the  universe.  While  they 
gleam  for  their  moment  they  share  in  the 
“light  that  coming  into  the  world  lighteth 
every  man/’  They  are  local  manifestations 
of  the  central  fire.  Where  they  came  from 
archaeologists  or  biologists  may  dispute ; 
where  they  go  to  hereafter  we  can  dimly 
guess.  But  what  they  are  we  know:  they 
are  receivers  and  containers  of  some  little 
portion  of  the  infinite  Life. 

We  may  have  forgotten  this  in  the  marts 
of  trade,  and  ignored  it  in  the  church,  but 
we  discovered  it  on  the  battlefield.  In  the 
camps  and  the  trenches  sleep  and  work  side 
by  side  the  banker  and  the  ditch-digger,  the 
violinist  and  the  peasant,  men  transfigured, 
socialized,  self -realized,  in  a  great  human 
unity,  a  devotion  to  a  life  beyond  life  and 
a  cause  worth  all  their  lives  together.  The 
“Tommy”  and  the  poilu  develop  unsuspected 
loyalties  and  undreamed-of  heroisms,  as  if 
the  commonest  clay  had  suddenly  been  re¬ 
molded  by  an  unseen  potter.  They  sing  and 

march  and  die  as  if  moving  to  unheard  music 

169 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 

and  to  unseen  goals.  From  one  of  the  great 
battlefields  Coningsby  Dawson  writes:  “I 
hate  the  thought  of  Fifth  Avenue,  with  its 
pretty  faces,  its  fashions,  its  smiling 
frivolity.  .  .  .  To  lay  down  one’s  life  for 
one’s  friend  once  seemed  impossible.  All 
that  is  altered.  We  lay  down  our  lives  that 
the  future  generations  may  be  good  and 
kind,  and  so  we  can  contemplate  oblivion 
with  quiet  eyes.  Nothing  that  is  noblest  that 
the  Greeks  taught  is  unpracticed  by  the 
simplest  men  out  here  to-day.  They  may  die 
childless,  but  their  example  will  father  the 
imagination  of  all  the  coming  ages.”  These 
are  the  men  we  have  neglected  or  despised 
as  country  clods,  or  city  parasites,  or  factory 
hands,  and  they  turn  out  to  be  the  uncon¬ 
scious  light-bearers  of  the  future.  And 
when  it  is  all  over,  and  the  camps  fade  away, 
and  the  poppies  bloom  over  the  ugly 
trenches,  and  the  men  are  at  home  again,  we 
shall  not  dare  to  think  of  them,  even  the 
maimed  and  broken  ones,  in  the  cheap  way 
we  thought  before.  They  will  be  to  us 
glimpses  of  the  infinite  life,  sons  of  God, 

who  may  if  they  will  enter  into  all  the 

J7Q 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


strength  and  glory  of  sonship.  So  we  shall 
be  returning  to  the  spirit  of  him  who  saw 
in  fickle  Peter  the  rock,  and  in  James  and 
John  the  Sons  of  Thunder. 

With  such  conceptions  of  man  and  God 
we  cannot  fail  to  rise  to  a  new  idea  of  the 
Christian  Society.  The  church  of  the  future 
will  be  the  visible  embodiment  of  the  king¬ 
dom  of  God,  ever  striving  to  be  as  wide,  as 
catholic,  as  spiritual  as  the  Kingdom  itself. 
It  is  a  tragic  thing  that  the  church  should 
include  only  a  segment  of  the  Kingdom,  only 
those  who  agree  on  certain  formulas  or 
rituals  or  modes  of  procedure.  The  church 
must  be  composed  of  all  Christ-like  men,  of 
every  race  and  faith  and  name.  To  share  in 
the  Christian  purpose  is  the  only  qualifica¬ 
tion  for  membership,  just  as  the  hand  is 
made  a  member  of  the  human  body  simply 
by  sharing  in  the  blood  that  comes  from  the 
heart.  The  fact  that  a  man’s  parents  were 
members  in  the  church  cannot  insure  his  en¬ 
trance;  the  fact  that  he  has  been  through 
initiatory  ceremonies,  however  solemn,  can¬ 
not  constitute  him  a  member.  The  one  re¬ 
quirement  for  the  church  must  be  identical 

171 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


with  requirement  for  the  Kingdom.  In  that 
church  will  be  rich  and  poor,  learned  and 
simple-minded,  philosophers  who  are 
thought  to  have  explained  Jesus  and  chil¬ 
dren  who  can  only  lisp  his  name — the  Christ- 
like  quality  makes  them  one.  All  such  be¬ 
lievers  in  the  Christian  attitude  toward  life 
may  utter  that  unique  saying  of  the  apostle 
Paul,  “The  love  of  Christ  constraineth 
( synechei )  us,”  which  a  friend  of  mine  trans¬ 
lates:  “The  love  of  Christ  holds  us  together, 
lifts  us  up  and  drives  us  on.” 

The  church  will  either  broaden  to  meet 
this  ideal  or  it  will  shrivel  until  it  becomes  the 
mere  guardian  of  dogma,  each  sect  jealously 
guarding  its  own  “distinctive  tenets,”  and  so 
putting  at  the  center  of  its  life  the  things 
that  belong  far  out  on  the  circumference. 
In  that  case  the  great  task  of  the  church 
will  be  performed  by  other  organizations, 
which  have  become  willing  to  ignore  and  for¬ 
get  in  order  that  they  may  achieve  and  save. 
The  church  of  the  future  will  care  much  less 
about  saving  its  tenets,  or  its  ritual,  but  care 
ever  more  and  more  about  saving  alive  the 

quality  of  spirit  which  was  in  the  Nazarene. 

172 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


To  have  that  quality  is  to  be  in  the  Kingdom 
and  to  possess  the  only  real  title  to  the  fel¬ 
lowship  of  the  Christian  Church. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  in  the  history  of  cer¬ 
tain  technical  schools  that  the  men  who  drop 
out  without  finishing  the  course  not  infre¬ 
quently  make  a  greater  outward  success  in 
life  than  do  those  who  remain  to  graduate. 
And  the  explanation  is  not  difficult.  It 
would  be  better,  of  course,  if  all  could  re¬ 
main  to  the  end  of  their  course.  But  those 
who  drop  out  are  often  men  of  the  volitional 
rather  than  the  intellectual  type,  men  who 
long  for  action  and  achievement,  men  whose 
restless  energy  chafes  against  necessary  re¬ 
straint,  while  those  who  remain  are  some¬ 
times  men  of  the  acquisitive  and  plastic  type 
who  can  learn  lessons  better  than  they  can 
organize  and  lead  their  fellow  men.  For  the 
same  reason,  those  who  have  left  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Church  to-day  are  sometimes  the  most 
truly  Christian  section  of  the  church,  the 
least  sectarian,  the  most  eager  to  reshape  the 
world.  Could  there  be  a  greater  tragedy 
than  that  the  passive  temperaments  should 

be  left  to  constitute  the  church,  while  the 

173 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


more  dynamic  and  constructive  minds  should 
move  away  from  it  and  seek  other  channels 
for  their  moral  energy?  This  must  not  be. 
A  static  church  will  disappear  with  the  dis¬ 
appearance  of  the  static  conception  of  man 
and  of  God.  The  real  defense  of  the  faith 
is  a  steady  offensive  in  behalf  of  the  King¬ 
dom  of  light.  Into  the  Christian  Society  we 
must  welcome  the  most  eager,  aggressive, 
advancing  spirits  of  our  day,  if  only  they  ad¬ 
vance  “with  the  cross  of  Jesus  going  on  be¬ 
fore.” 

Then  will  come  the  making  of  the  new 
earth.  We  hear  much  about  the  rebuilding 
of  ruined  cities  and  villages,  the  replanting 
of  farms  and  orchards,  the  reassembling  of 
scattered  products  of  industry.  All  that  is 
important  and  must  be  done ;  it  will  be  done 
more  swiftly  than  we  think.  Nature  is  al¬ 
ready  at  work  covering  war-torn  acres  with 
flowers,  obliterating  barriers  with  rains  and 
floods.  The  rebuilding  of  villages  under 
modern  conditions  will  be  swift.  The  re¬ 
building  of  San  Francisco  was  accomplished 
as  if  by  magic.  Shell-holes  will  give  place 
to  gardens,  barbed  wire  make  way  for  green 

174 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


hedge-rows,  and  out  of  “No  Man’s  Land” 
will  rise  home  and  market  place  and  school. 
Engineers  will  be  called  from  the  ends  of  the 
earth  to  reconstruct  ruined  bridges  and 
tunnels  and  highways,  and  “city-planners” 
will  see  their  long-cherished  dreams  come 
true  in  brick  and  stone  and  busy  streets  and 
sheltered  parks. 

But  the  real  problem  is  the  reconstruction 
of  the  social  order  so  that  in  it  may  be  visibly 
embodied  the  ideals  of  the  Christian  faith. 
The  religion  that  we  have  seen  “up  in 
heaven,”  the  great  insight  that  God  is  love 
and  that  man  was  made  to  love,  must  come 
down  to  earth  and  be  expressed  in  the  en¬ 
tire  social,  industrial,  and  political  order. 
Human  society  must  be  reconstituted  on  the 
basis,  not  of  happiness,  or  health,  or  comfort, 
or  bare  justice,  but  on  the  basis  of  love.  Are 
we  ready  for  all  the  social  and  economic  and 
political  changes  that  reconstruction  will  in¬ 
volve?  Are  we  ready  to  consider  again  the 
relations,  labor  and  capital,  the  organizations 
of  laboring  men,  the  methods  of  modern  gov¬ 
ernments,  the  relation  of  the  white  race  to  the 
yellow  race,  and  to  consider  all  these  prob- 

175 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


lems  in  the  light  of  what  Christian  love  de¬ 
mands  of  those  who  profess  it? 

The  Archbishop  of  York  during  his  visit 
to  America  deliberately  abstained  from  the 
easy  methods  of  denunciation.  “The  war,” 
he  said,  “is  a  great  opportunity  out  of  which 
to  build  up  the  greatest  power  in  human  life 
— and  that  is  the  element  of  love.  A  love 
for  the  divine  Right,  a  love  for  one’s  fellow- 
men,  a  love  for  peoples  of  other  lands — only 
by  cultivating  universal  love  can  the  new 
world  be  built  upon  great  and  lasting  foun¬ 
dations.” 

Strangely  enough,  almost  at  the  same 
time  there  came  a  corresponding  voice  out  of 
Germany,  showing  that  even  in  the  land  that 
sings  hymns  of  hate  there  are  some  who 
have  not  bowed  the  knee.  It  is  the  voice  of 
a  writer  of  fiction,  Leonhard  Frank,  who 
says:  “The  enemy  is  not  the  Englishman  or 
the  Frenchman  or  the  Russian.  The  enemy 
is  ourselves.  Want  of  love,  that  is  the  ene¬ 
my,  that  is  the  cause  of  all  wars.  Europe  is 
mad  because  she  no  longer  knows  how  to 
love.”  ' 

There  is  in  all  the  world  to-day  a  passion- 

176 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


ate,  but  mistaken  cry  for  mere  justice.  It 
is  no  wonder  that  humanity,  groaning  under 
long  slavery  and  cruel  wrong,  should  cry  out 
for  justice.  Men  are  seeing  clearly  that 
modern  charity  covers  a  multitude  of  sins, 
that  the  giving  of  doles  to  the  poor  can 
never  abolish  poverty,  and  that  much  of  our 
philanthropy  is  but  patching  up  of  an  out¬ 
worn  garment.  Hence  the  cry,  “Not 
charity,  but  justice.”  Hence  the  resentment 
against  ostentatious  welfare  work,  and  the 
scorn  for  professional  up  lifters,  and  the  de¬ 
mand  for  something  more  fundamental  than 
improving  the  condition  of  the  poor.  Hence 
many  men  have  cut  off  their  subscriptions 
to  mere  relief  work  and  have  flung  them¬ 
selves  into  the  crusade  for  social  justice.  But 
will  the  establishment  of  justice  alone  mean 
the  coming  of  the  Kingdom? 

In  a  game  of  chess  we  see  perfect  justice 
ruling  all  the  movements  on  the  checquered 
board.  Each  piece  perfectly  observes  the 
rules  of  the  game.  Each  bishop  keeps  on 
his  own  white  or  black  squares.  No  knight 
ever  encroaches  unlawfully  on  his  opponent. 
Each  small  pawn  is  safe  from  illegal  attack 

177 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


by  king  or  queen.  Charity  in  the  game  is 
unthinkable;  laws  established  centuries  ago 
govern  each  wooden  figure  as  it  advances  or 
retreats.  With  what  result?  With  the  re¬ 
sult  of  a  dehumanized,  mechanical  relation 
of  all  the  pieces  to  one  another,  a  wooden 
society  destitute  of  all  the  ardent  sympathies 
and  glowing  loyalties  that  mark  the  humblest 
human  family  in  the  smallest  human  home. 
Bare  justice  suffices  for  a  game,  but  not  for 
human  life.  Men  are  not  pawns,  and  “in  the 
course  of  justice  no  one  of  us  should  see  sal¬ 
vation.”  A  society  held  together  by  bare 
justice  would  have  no  oppression,  no 
tyranny,  and  also  no  sympathy,  no  gratitude, 
no  joyous  devotion  to  home  or  native  land. 
Bare  justice  is  a  prospect  from  which  all 
men  would  shrink  if  they  could  once  see  it 
established.  “Each  to  count  as  one  and 
none  as  more  than  one” — that  is  the  dreary 
millennium  of  the  English  utilitarians.  It  is 
a  state  in  which  each  lonely  man  gets  his 
rights  and  no  man  truly  comes  alive.  It  is 
as  illusory  as  the  giving  of  suffrage  to  the 
colored  race  in  the  Southern  States,  while 
giving  them  nothing  more.  Of  all  men  per- 

178 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


haps  the  most  unhappy  is  the  man  who  has 
gotten  his  rights  and  gotten  no  vital  union 
with  his  fellow  men,  no  cooperative  share  in 
the  great  human  task. 

Hence  religion  offers  vastly  more  than 
justice.  It  offers  us  the  irresistible  dynamic 
of  love.  It  brings  out  of  the  sky  the  trans¬ 
forming  faith  that  the  binding  force  of  the 
universe  is  love,  and  that  the  only  adequate 
reconstructive  force  in  society  is  that  same 
pervading  resistless  love.  The  only  reason 
why  we  reject  love  as  weak,  as  mawkish  and 
impracticable,  is  that  we  do  not  know  what 
love  is. 

Some  men  deliberately  propose  a  world- 
order  based  on  fear.  Since  wrongs  may  at 
any  time  be  committed,  they  propose  that 
each  class  in  society  shall  organize  for  its 
own  defense  and  shall  endeavor  to  be 
stronger  than  the  class  which  may  threaten 
encroachment.  They  propose  that  the  na¬ 
tions  of  the  earth  shall  live  in  a  perpetual 
preparedness  for  defensive — which  always 
includes  offensive — war.  They  honestly  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  only  safety  lies  in  creating  and 
maintaining  in  each  nation  a  universal  fear. 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


The  nation  in  whom  that  fear  is  most  acute 
will  thus  be  the  safest.  If  nation  A  doubles 
its  navy,  nation  B  with  enlightened  fear 
must  also  double  its  navy,  which  will  force 
nation  A  to  another  increase,  and  so  on, 
world  without  end.  Practically,  this  means 
that  in  a  group  of  half  a  dozen  great  powers 
each  one  must  be  stronger  than  the  other  five. 
And  all  six  nations  must  base  their  entire 
national  life  on  an  all-pervading,  ever-pres¬ 
ent  fear.  Such  a  civilization  is  obviously 
doomed  to  ever  recurrent  wars ;  what  it  per¬ 
sistently  fears  and  constantly  plans  for  it 
will  surely  get.  There  are  only  three  pos¬ 
sible  bases  for  human  society:  mutual  fear 
which  keeps  men  asunder,  mutual  hatred 
which  drives  them  into  constant  collision,  and 
mutual  regard  which  induces  them  to  com¬ 
bine  and  cooperate.  Have  we  not  long 
enough  tried  fear  and  hate  ? 

But  we  have  only  dimly  understood,  or 
persistently  misunderstood,  what  love  is. 
Surely,  it  is  not  supine  resignation  to  evil. 
It  is  not  maudlin  tenderness  toward  wrong¬ 
doers.  It  is  the  most  active  and  aggressive 

and  unflinching  of  all  the  forces  with  which 

180 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


we  have  to  reckon.  How  often  have  we  read 
the  phrase  “faith,  hope,  and  charity”  as  if 
the  three  virtues  were  arranged  as  an  anti¬ 
climax!  We  have  understood  it  to  mean 
“faith,  hope,  and  a  bread-line.”  Faith  is  the 
all-achieving  quality  of  the  explorer,  the  in¬ 
ventor,  the  leader  of  men.  Hope  is  the 
radiant  energy  of  great  spirits.  And  the 
love  which  is  greater  than  both  cannot  be  a 
gelatinous  complacency,  or  a  willingness  to 
drop  a  dole  in  a  poor  man’s  hat. 

Love  is  absolutely  relentless.  It  is  the 
“hound  of  heaven,”  ever  following  the  hu¬ 
man  scent.  Love  can  punish  children  and 
childish  men.  Love  can  cry,  “Ye  serpents! 
Ye  vipers!”  Love  can  force  a  surgical  opera¬ 
tion  when  only  steel  can  banish  disease. 
Love  can  knock  down  the  madman  without 
ceasing  for  a  moment  to  love  him.  Love  can 
restrain  by  force  the  drunken  man  or  the 
drunken  nation  without  any  surrender  to 
the  bitterness  of  hatred.  The  God  who  is 
perfect  love  is  also  a  consuming  fire.  His 
love  counts  among  its  resources  both  his 
heaven  and  his  hell. 

While  I  am  writing  these  words  a  friend 

181 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


asks:  “Can  you  really  love  a  man  while  you 
are  running  him  through  with  a  bayonet?” 
That  is  a  fair  question  which  is  answered  in 
every  hospital  when  the  surgeon  drives  the 
knife  into  a  human  body,  as  the  only  way 
of  bringing  release  from  pain.  And  if  a  can¬ 
cerous  growth  has  fastened  itself  upon  the 
vitals  of  a  nation,  then  to  cut  out  whole 
regiments  with  cold  steel  may  be  the  only 
way  of  saving  that  nation  from  a  disease 
which  means  death  to  itself  and  peril  to  all 
humanity. 

Instead  of  painting  love  as  blind,  we 
should  picture  it  with  radiant,  far-seeing 
eyes.  Love  sees  evil  and  is  unafraid.  It 
blinks  no  fact  in  all  the  world  of  reality.  It 
wears  no  blinders  as  it  faces  the  grim  and 
terrifying  world.  Just  because  it  sees  so 
deeply,  it  believes  so  unquenchably.  It  sees 
the  cruelty  and  greed  and  lust  in  man,  but 
it  sees  the  man  behind  the  lust  and  cruelty 
and  greed.  It  sees  the  depths  to  which  men 
have  fallen,  and  it  sees  that  only  a  being  so 
great  could  have  fallen  so  low.  “Are  you 
going  to  drink  like  men  or  like  beasts?”  said 

a  visitor  to  a  company  of  men  in  a  tavern. 

182 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


“What  do  you  mean?”  came  the  answer: 
“Of  course  we  shall  drink  like  men.”  “Then 
you  are  going  to  get  drunk,”  said  the  visitor, 
“for  beasts  never  do  that.”  Love  sees  in  the 
very  descent  of  man  a  proof  of  his  power  to 
ascend.  It  is  an  inexpugnable  faith  that  the 
wrongs  men  commit  are  the  measure  of  their 
possible  righteousness. 

Love  transforms  society  by  enabling  men 
ultimately  to  conquer  their  enemies.  Merely 
to  fight  our  enemies  and  do  nothing  more  is 
to  rouse  them  to  utmost  hostility.  “That 
which  resists,  supports.”  To  march  upon 
the  foe  with  an  army,  and  do  no  more,  is  to 
call  forth  all  his  reserves.  To  hate  him  is  to 
call  out  answering  hatred.  To  love  him  in- 
defatigably  and  uncompromisingly,  to  love 
his  inner  self  behind  that  hateful  exterior, 
and  by  relentless  love  to  make  him  at  last  lov¬ 
able — that  is  the  attack  against  which  human 
nature  is  defenseless.  If  the  enemy  once 
realizes  that  nothing  he  can  do  can  stop  our 
loving  him,  nothing  stop  the  projection  to¬ 
ward  him  of  scorn  for  his  cruelty  and  per¬ 
sistent  faith  in  his  better  self,  he  is  forced  to 

surrender.  Against  such  strange  and  in- 

183 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


credible  tactics  there  is  no  final  defense  for 
men  or  nations.  When  Jesus  under  the 
olives  of  Gethsemane  addressed  to  Judas  the 
one  word  “Friend,”  the  traitor  and  the  sol¬ 
diers  with  him  went  backward  and  fell  to 
the  ground.  Had  Jesus  cried  “Traitor,” 
there  would  have  been  instant  attack  upon 
him.  But  when  he  looked  beyond  the 
treachery  to  the  latent  loyalty  in  the  soul, 
the  miscreants  were  disarmed  and  flung  to 
the  earth  by  the  strange  assault  of  love. 
“Stranger  to  our  age,  Jesus  was  strange  to 
his  own;  so  strange  that  men  were  driven 
either  to  crucify  him  or  else  to  take  up  the 
cross  themselves.” 

It  is  vastly  easier  to  go  over  wholly  into 

the  method  of  Jesus  than  to  go  part  way. 

If  we  balance  love  and  hate,  if  we  say  we  will 

love  men  so  far  as  they  deserve  our  love,  and 

hate  them  so  far  as  they  oppose  us,  we  are 

left  confused  and  powerless.  We  get  neither 

the  results  of  the  Galilean  nor  those  of  the 

Corsican,  neither  the  victory  of  love  nor  that 

of  power.  But  when  we  go  completely  “over 

the  top,”  when  we  say  with  the  dying  Edith 

Cavell,  “Patriotism,”  that  is,  limited,  local- 

184 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


ized  devotion,  “is  not  enough;  I  must  die 
without  hatred  or  bitterness  toward  anyone,” 
we  have  passed  over  into  the  irresistible 
might  of  the  method  of  Jesus,  and  the  enemy 
is  conquered,  though  he  may  not  know  it. 
Hatred  must  surrender  the  moment  it  is  sure 
that  love  never  will. 

“Whether  the  time  be  slow  or  fast. 

Enemies  hand  in  hand 
Must  come  together  at  the  last 
And  understand. 

“No  matter  how  the  die  is  cast. 

Or  who  may  seem  to  win, 

You  know  that  you  must  love  at  last — 

Why  not  begin?” 

The  tremendous  sentiment  of  nationality 
has  swept  over  the  world  in  recent  years  as 
a  great  emancipator  of  souls.  It  has  made 
the  obscurest  day  laborer  feel  his  participa¬ 
tion  in  a  million  other  lives,  his  responsibility 
for  future  centuries.  He  has  become  a  part¬ 
ner  with  the  generations  before  and  after, 
and  is  dignified  and  ennobled  beyond  meas¬ 
ure.  But  this  sentiment  of  nationality  is 
only  a  partial  realization  of  Christian  love. 

185 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


“Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor”  is  not  a  doom 
to  a  repulsive  task ;  it  is  a  summons  to  an  ex¬ 
pansion  of  personality,  a  release  of  spiritual 
power,  a  citizenship  of  the  world.  All  the 
higher  commandments  of  religion  are  re¬ 
leases  of  the  human  spirit.  They  never  shut 
us  in  with  the  past,  but  summon  us  to  emerge 
from  yesterday  and  create  to-morrow. 

Is  it  not  a  most  significant  thing  that  the 
whole  human  race  is  to-day  dreaming  of  a 
League  of  Nations  as  the  inevitable  outcome 
of  the  Combat  of  Nations?  Any  particular 
scheme  for  a  League  we  can  riddle  with  ob¬ 
jections.  It  is  premature,  fantastic,  chi¬ 
merical,  unsound — yet  somehow  it  will  not 
down!  It  is  a  dream  cherished  by  millions 
who  before  the  Great  War  never  heard  of 
it.  Fifty  years  ago  men  whispered  it  in 
peace  conferences  and  were  ignored  as  harm¬ 
less  visionaries.  Twenty  years  ago  diplo¬ 
mats  and  statesmen  began  to  look  into  the 
matter  with  languid  interest.  Now  we  are 
swept  toward  some  such  international  or¬ 
ganization  by  irresistible  tides.  The  sorrows 
of  the  grieving  world,  the  millions  of  widows, 

orphans,  and  cripples,  command  us  to  find 

186 


REBUILDING  OF  THE  WORLD 


a  better  way  of  living  together  on  a  planet 
which  grows  smaller  every  year.  Cool- 
headed  statesmen  begin  to  entertain  and 
ponder  the  plans  of  the  visionaries.  Mr. 
Arthur  J.  Balfour  said  at  Edinburgh, 
“While  I  recognize  the  difficulties,  I  think 
it  mean  and  cowardly  to  shrink  from  them, 
and  I  hope  the  civilized  world  will  take  that 
great  problem  seriously  and  see  it  through.” 
In  his  opinion  the  mean  and  cowardly  are 
not  those  who  would  abolish  war,  but  those 
who  do  not  desire  to  abolish  it.  The  cow¬ 
ardly  are  those  who  shrink  from  any  pact  of 
peace  because  they  are  still  manacled  by 
ancestral  fears. 

In  the  same  line  is  the  declaration  of 
Frederick  Edwin  Smith,  Attorney- General 
of  Great  Britain,  who,  after  pointing  out 
many  difficulties  in  the  path  of  any  interna¬ 
tional  covenant,  yet  said:  “It  is  worth  while 
trying  for  an  ideal.  It  is  better  to  hitch  your 
wagon  to  a  star  than  to  a  machine  gun.” 
Truly  that  is  the  alternative:  either  we  go 
back  to  the  bludgeon  of  the  savage,  now 
skillfully  transformed  into  a  rapid-firing 

gun,  which  would  settle  all  problems  with- 

187 


RELIGION  AND  WAR 


out  appeal  to  any  law  or  reason,  or  we  go 
forward  on  a  dim  but  star-lit  path  to  the  new 
earth.  Do  we  dare  to  go?  The  real  reli¬ 
gion  of  valor  is  the  religion  of  Jesus.  With 
unquenchable  audacity  it  undertakes  its  sub¬ 
lime  task.  Columbus  found  a  new  world ;  we 
must  construct  one.  We  dedicate  ourselves 
to  that  creative  task. 


188 


Date  Due 

Ap  2  p  4fi 

31  W 

***m*>*» 

way  *3  15 

**  AY  1  2 

2011 

ap  |  ’51 

UK^tTti 

JAN  7  'S3 

JAN  2  1 ’Si 

*  • ..  2  i! ' 

f 

* 

MtfW*?’?  ■,  gtjfiljUMSr.'  ■ 

a.  . 

W; 

